


My Motherfucking Best Friend

by FailureArtist



Series: Hot Mess [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Drugs, Dubious Consent, Hurt/Comfort, Kink Meme, Moirallegiance, Multi, Non-Sgrub AU, Older AU, Other, Recovery, repost
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-08
Updated: 2011-10-04
Packaged: 2017-10-20 12:36:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 18
Words: 30,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/212838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FailureArtist/pseuds/FailureArtist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>wHoOoOoA hOw DiD tHiS rEtUrN fRoM tHe DeAd? It'S a MoThErFuCkInG mIrAcLe!</p><p>Actual summary: Gamzee turns promiscuous and goes deeper into drug addiction, and Karkat tries to save him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Gamzee couldn’t remember the name of the troll currently hugging him. It didn’t matter. He called them all his “mOtHeRfUcKiNg BeSt FrIeNd” and they all seemed to get a kick out of it. Some of them even laughed. He liked when people laughed. He liked to amuse people.

                The troll on top of him was large and burly and even though he was nowhere close on the hemospectrum to purple, he smelled of sea salt. Gamzee liked trolls who smelled of salt. It made him feel so warm inside and oh, this troll’s body was so warm. The troll, his motherfucking best friend, was holding him so tight. He just kept pulling him into a hug, over and over. His friend said such wonderful things, Gamzee couldn’t figure out what they were, but he knew they were compliments.   
                                “Oh ggod,” his best friend ever grunted, “how do you stay so fuckingg tigght?”   
                             “I’m just hella tight I guess,” Gamzee mumbled back.   
                His best friend laughed at the unexpected reply.   
                                “Wow, talkingg aggain? I would have thougght you dead if it weren’t for the way you’re milkingg my bone bulgge.”   
                                “Bulge a funny word,” he slurred.   
                                “You’re a funny gguy.”   
                Gamzee smiled even wider. He had forgotten his best motherfucking friend’s bone bulge was in his nook. He only felt a mild soreness from there. It had been a long night with many pies.   
                His friend gave one last thrust and spilled his green genetic material into the already overflowing nook.  Gamzee shuddered, but didn’t come. He was too tired for that. He just stared at the ceiling, his face frozen in a huge smile.  His smile disappeared when his friend stopped hugging him.   
                                “No, come back here,” he whined.   
                                “Damn, you’re insatiable,” the green-blooded troll said as he wiped his bulge on Gamzee’s discarded pants, “But I ggot to ggo back to my hive before day.”   
                Gamzee pushed himself up by his elbows.   
                                “You could stay here,” he said, “The sun isn’t inside.”   
                                “Where would I sleep?”   
                                “Think I got something…a bath tub? Could sleep there.”   
                                 “What, you’re ggoingg to fill your ablution trap with sopor slime? Do you even have any left for your own recupercoon?”   
                                “You can be in mine. I won’t sleep with the daymares. Too motherfucking stoned.”   
                                “Look it doesn’t fuckingg matter, I can’t stay here an entire day, the old bear is probably worried enough about me,” he said as he walked past Gamzee’s body to leave, “Ggod, it’s like my lusus doesn’t realize I’m eigght solar…”   
                Gamzee grabbed the troll’s ankle.   
                                “Don’t leave me…”   
                The older troll looked down and sighed.   
                                “You’re always like this near dawn. Why can ’t I ever visit you earlier?”   
                                “Please visit me…”   
                                “I’ll stop visitingg you if you keep this up, and I’ll tell all my friends to stop visitingg you.”   
                Gamzee pulled more. His friend kicked him in the head.   
                                “You ggoddamn nookpanned slut, have a fayggo and forgget all this.”   
                The stoner fell back again. He listened to the sound of his friend leaving until it disappeared. He stared at the ceiling. He felt sad, but he couldn’t remember why.  



	2. Chapter 2

Karkat Vantas snuck around the back of Gamzee’s hive, clenching his sickle tight. He looked around constantly. It was dangerous to be out in the open on the beach.  There was no cover for him except the hive, and a highblood might take offense at him even being near it.  Highbloods liked to take offense in everything, and his anonymous grey just made them assume he was a lowblood.  Karkat was terrified, he was tired from his trip, and he had planned it so badly he was now in danger of being caught in the sun. Still, it was worth it. He needed to be there for his friend.   
                Karkat had grown apart from Gamzee over the seasons. There was a whole group of friends he didn’t hear much from anymore. They were closer when they were all five solar sweeps, at least as close as a group of disparate trolls could be.  A series of accidents pushed them apart a little and time did the rest.  Karkat was still best friends with Sollux, but he didn’t hear any gossip about the rest of the gang from the introverted troll.  Karkat didn’t mind; he was sad to say he cared more about celebrity gossip than about news of his friends.   
                That changed when Karkat received an email from terminallyCapricious. The email was barely a letter at all.  Not one sentence made any sense.  Karkat couldn’t tell if he was trying to tell him he’d been kidnapped or trying to give him a recipe for pie.  Karkat asked Sollux if he had heard any news about Gamzee. After prying it out of him, Sollux admitted he had heard Gamzee was a hot mess. He didn’t go any further.  Karkat reread the email and knew he had to go help out the troll who once called Karkat his best friend.   
                Karkat thought he had left early in the night, but now the sky was slowly brightening. He hoped Gamzee was in. The windows seemed to say he was in, but Karkat was afraid the light might be from another troll who confiscated his hive. Karkat clenched his sickle as he thought about Gamzee being already dead. Karkat heard the front door. He leaned his back against the wall and peered over the corner. A large troll swaggered out of Gamzee’s hive.  Karkat saw his sign was green and sighed in relief. Only a troll from the indigo caste or higher would dare confiscate the hive.  The green-blooded troll walked off in the other direction. Karkat watched him until he disappeared behind a dune.  He ran to the front door. It wasn’t locked. He then realized his relief had been too soon. There were so many other bad things that could happened Gamzee. Karkat forgot his carefulness and threw open the door.  He didn’t see Gamzee immediately, so he panicked.  He then noticed the outlay of the hive had changed.  The respiteblock must have been moved from the foyer.  He slowly walked sideways up the stairs, sickle in hand.  He saw a door that looked li ke it might be the right one. He opened the door a few inches. He saw a naked troll lying on a pile of clothes. When he saw the distinctive horns he threw open the door and ran over to the body.   
                It was certainly Gamzee’s body. Those horns were too rare to be anyone else’s. His hair was as wild as ever. He hadn’t grown that much in the intervening time. He had been tall for a five solar sweep troll, but now that puberty had caught up with the rest of his generation he was now comparatively small.  He was dangerously thin and pale even for a troll.  His body was covered in faint but noticeable bruises and scars. Karkat looked at his face. There was no makeup, but he couldn’t tell if it was because Gamzee had stopped wearing it or because it smeared off.  He still had his old religious posters, though the colors had faded. Without his makeup, the bags under his eyes were so dark. His eyes were glassy, and Karkat was afraid he was dead. He waved his hand in front of Gamzee’s eyes and his pupils followed a few seconds late. Good. Karkat checked for a pulse on his neck. Gamzee finally started speaking.   
                                “Hey, my motherfucking best friend, whatca doing?”   
                                “Taking your pulse,” Karkat said, “I can’t do it while you’re talking.”   
                                “Okay, you can do whatever you want.”   
                Karkat abandoned trying to find the pulse now that he knew his patient was alive and sort of conscious.  He dug through the pile of clothes so he could put one arm under Gamzee’s knee and the other behind Gamzee’s neck.  He picked up the body along with several items of clothes. He stumbled to the closest door he could find and kicked it open. Luckily, it turned out to be the hygieneblock.  He tried to gently place the body in the ablation trap, but only managed to drop it. Gamzee groaned a little but didn’t say anything.  Karkat turned on the water and went to the cabinet to take anything useful he could find.  He found some green muffins, unmarked bottles, and other dubious things, but he did find a bar of soap and a washcloth. Karkat ran back to the trap. He tested the water. It was hot, but not scalding. He realized he had accidentally dropped some clothes in the there. He took out a floating black mass and saw it was a pair of female panties. Karkat looked over at Gamzee’s respiteblock. What had he been doing? It hadn’t been a condiment party in there.    
                Karkat had been avoiding looking closely at Gamzee’s body to preserve a modicum of dignity for the clown, but now he examined Gamzee's genitals.  His inflamed nook was filled with a brownish slurry of various genetic material. There was even a tra il of it going from the pile to the trap. Karkat gagged when he realized some of it was on his clothes now.  He tore off his shirt, took the washcloth, and furiously started scrubbing the nook. He saw the bone bulge wasn’t intact either. There was a dark purple ring around the base. Someone had tied a string around it to keep it hard. He cursed trolldom and its lack of ethics for the millionth time that night.   
                Karkat leaned further into the trap to clean Gamzee’s body when he felt something warm and wet on his neck.  He turned to see Gamzee with his huge tongue lolling out.   
                                “You like me licking yo neck?” he said.   
                                “No I don’t like you licking my fucking neck!”   
                Gamzee frowned, and then his tongue moved down to Karkat’s shoulder and dangerously close t o his vestigial thorax openings. Karkat pulled away.   
                                “You don’t like my licking?” Gamzee asked, “But everyone likes my licking.”   
                Karkat looked at Gamzee’s sad face and down at his own uncovered chest. He had given him the wrong impression. Hell, Karkat had the wrong impression himself. He had thought Gamzee had been raped but the truth looked much more complicated.   
                                Karkat shot off, “Did you have sex? Who did you have sex with? How many trolls? Why did you fuck so many trolls?”   
                                “I don’t know, a lot? Me and my friends had fun.”   
                Karkat wanted to despise the troll for bringing this upon himself, for being so disgusting and perverse, but he couldn’t. He just felt pity.  He had a feeling of it on the way here, but now he knew he definitely felt pale for Gamzee. He would have to wait for his moirail to sober up to propose anything, but he was sure this was fate. This was just like a scene from one of his movies! It was so romantic.   
                Then Gamzee vomited on him.   
                After cleaning up the vomit, Karkat washed the rest of Gamzee the best he could. He was surprised that the stoner wasn’t as unkempt as he would have thought. Sure, he was dirty, but it was just one night’s worth of dirt.  This sounded reassuring until Karkat realized his “friends” probably took care of his hygiene just so he would be a better sexual partner.  Karkat felt strange bathing Gamzee now. No wonder he just assumed his best friend wanted to make out with him in the trap.   
                Karkat took his moirail out of the water before he got all pruney. He found several towels in the closet and laid some of them down on the floor.  He pulled Gamzee out of the tub and laid him on the towels. He dried him off with another towel, taking extra care around his sore inner thigh.  He made an impromptu cocoon out of towels. Gamzee soon fell asleep. Karkat was suddenly worried the poor troll would have daymares, until he remembered that high levels of sopor slime ingestion suppress dreaming. He also remembered to turn him on his side in case the troll vomited.  Karkat walked over to Gamzee’s room, stepping over the various junk in his room, until he found a shirt that was less dirty than the rest. He went back to the hygieneblock, sat down at Gamzee’s side, and settled in for the day.


	3. Chapter 3

    Gamzee opened his eyes to the blinding light. He thought it was the middle of the day until he realize, no, it was much worse, it was night time. His eyes were just incredibly sensitive. That wasn’t the only thing that was sensitive. His whole body hurt, but what hurt most was his stretched-out nook. It felt like he’d sat down on one of his clubs. What had he done last night? Fuck, he knew what he had done last night. He couldn’t really remember, but he could easily guess: he’d done a bakery’s worth of slime and let every troll in the sector fuck him. The same thing he did every night.   
                When he tried to remember his orgies, it felt like it wasn’t really him doing all that, but some inconsiderate asshole temporarily inhabiting his body. The stoned Gamzee would have his fill of sopor slime and genetic material, pass out with a smile on his face, and leave hungover-as-a-motherfucker Gamzee to clean up the mess. He wished he could strangle stoned Gamzee.   
                He thrashed about in his towel prison until he managed to throw them all off. He was cold now, very cold, but his slowly rising sense of dignity wouldn’t allow him to stay wrapped up like a grub in a cocoon.  He lay shivering and trying his hardest not to vomit when the hive thundered with footsteps.  A troll walked through the already open bathroom door. Gamzee craned his head to see whatever “friend” he had drudged up last night.   
                Gamzee knew right away that this guy was not a new face. He recognized him, though he had changed a bit throughout the years. He just couldn’t remember the name. It began with a K…Kitten? What a stupid name. The shirt wasn’t giving him any hints. He just knew he hated the guy, not in a sexy way but in a why-the-fuck-did-you-bother-coming-around way. He saw the bowl of porridgemeal in the mystery troll’s hand and knew why he felt that way.  He was one of those guys.   
                You would think he would hate the trolls who just left him right after pailing, but he didn’t mind them. Sure, stoned Gamzee would cry and beg them not to leave, but sober Gamzee never had to see their faces and that was fine with him. It was the ones who stuck around till the next evening that really struck a nerve. They thought they were being nice. They did act nice. They made sure he wasn’t dead or sick. They’d wipe off the genetic material, maybe get him to a proper bucket or at least a toilet, and wash him off in the bathtub. They’d wait with him until he woke up and they would give him a hot meal. But while his face was stuffed with food, they’d very carefully explain how they couldn’t be with him. It usually was red romance they preemptively turned down, no matter how black the sex had been earlier. They’d tell him they had a matesprit or a kismesis or both. Some times they’d explain how rocky their relationships were going but how they really planned to work this one out, really! Sober Gamzee had better memory. He knew they each gave the same clown-damn speech every time. The only thing that changed was the names of their real, true partners. Gamzee had to sit still and be rejected over and over.   
Gamzee wasn’t in the mood for that right now. He pulled on his guest’s stolen shirt. The motherfucker dropped the bowl on the floor and kneeled.   
                                “What the fuck was that about?” the troll yelled, “I’m trying to be nice!”   
                                “I’m tired of you nice ass motherfuckers,” Gamzee snarled, “Don’t give me no rap about your mating life.”   
                                “What are you talking about?”

        “You’re gonna tell me we can’t be all lovey-hatey together forever, when I know you just came here to get your motherfucking pail on.”

                                “I didn’t come here to have sex with you. I haven’t ever had sex with you!”   
                                Gamzee laughed. “Is that the new line you ninjas are using? You thinking ‘This guy has holes in his think pan, I can tell him anything I want and he’ll swallow that shit’? It ain’t going work on this clearheaded motherfucker.”   
                He grabbed the motherfucker’s shirt again and pulled it toward his crotch.   
                                “I’m naked and my junk is on fire. Someone has to be responsible and I don’t see anyone else. The only question here is did you take the bulge or the nook.”   
                              “Neither, get my face away from there!”   
                                “You probably had your face pressed in there last night. You grabbed my heaving bone bulge like it was a telephone and you ordered a number 69.” Gamzee laughed at his own joke, though he didn’t get it.   
                Karkat broke away from Gamzee’s grip.   
                                “You dumpass, I’m not interested in sex, I came here to help you!”   
                                Gamzee snorted. “You can ‘help’ me by getting me a big ass pie.”   
                The unwelcome guest crossed his arms.   
                                “I’m not going to let you get stoned again.”   
                Gamzee was annoyed bu t not surprised by his refusal. The nice guys sometimes did that, but not for long. This guy just needed some persuasion.   
                                “Get me a fucking big ass pie!” he screamed as sunk his claws into the troll’s thigh.   
                                “Ahhgghh!” the troll screamed back, “I can’t get you anything when you got me pinned down!”   
                Gamzee released his hand.   
                                “Got a bunch of muffins in the cabinet, go get them.”   
                The troll walked over to the cabinet. Gamzee rolled over to watch him.  He smiled as the boy took all of those wonderful muffins into arms. His smile turned into a snarl as the idiot dropped them in the toilet.   
                                “What the fuck, you clums y asshole?” Gamzee yelled.   
                                “I said I wasn’t going to give you any more sopor slime,” he answered as he flushed the toilet.   
                Gamzee growled and rolled over toward the door. The boy jumped over and shut and locked it. He held his body between Gamzee and the sweet sweet slime in his respiteblock. He was serious about keeping Gamzee off the slime. Most nice guys backed down instantly. Despite their supposed disgust with his habit they wanted their easy compliant fucktoy back.  Gamzee could respect him for that. Of course, he would respect the troll more if he WOULD JUST GIVE HIM SOME GODDAMN SOPOR SLIME!   
                                “You let me out or I’ll CUT YOUR NUBBY-HORNED HEAD OFF!” he screamed.   
                Karkat just shook his head no. Gamzee tried to stand but settled for crawling over on his hands and knees over to him.  He looked at his own frail body and figured out he wasn’t going to be able to physically threaten the stronger, more fit troll. He pulled on the guy’s jeans.   
                                He whined, “PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE let me have some sopor slime i’ll die I’LL DIE!”   
                                “You’ll die if you keep eating that stuff!”   
                Gamzee rubbed his head on his sex partner’s crotch.   
                                “I’ll do anything for you mister anything I’ll suck your bulge I’LL SUCK THE SHIT OUT OF YOUR WASTE CHUTE!”   
                The boy put his arm around his face. In a muffled voice he said,   
                                “We can’t have sex, you’re my goddamn moirail!”   
                 Gamzee paused.   
                                “When did I get a patron?”   
                                The boy dropped his arm, “Um, just right now.”   
                Gamzee let go. The boy dropped to his knees. He held Gamzee’s shaking hands.   
                                “Gamzee Makara,” he said, “Will you be my moirail?”   
                Gamzee Makara gave a big genuine smile.   
                                “Of course, my motherfucking best friend,” he said, “Now what the fuck is your name again?”


	4. Chapter 4

After Karkat re-introduced himself to Gamzee, the forgetful troll was keen on him again. He reaffirmed his pale devotion to Karkat Vantas and gave him a big hug. Karkat stiffened but he felt relieved at his moirail’s attitude, thought the promiscuous troll was rubbing against his crotch too much for comfort.  Karkat let him hug for a while and then said,

                                “Could you get off me?”   
                Gamzee frowned but did so.   
                                “It’s just we can’t spend all night having a cuddle fest,” Karkat added.   
                He looked down at the other troll’s naked body.  His bruises had faded, though his scars still remained. He noticed Karkat’s look, but he didn’t blush. Instead he posed a bit provocatively,  making Karkat threaten to blush. Karkat looked away.   
                                “First order of business, we need to get you some clothes because my moirail is not going to run around stark naked,” he said.   
                Karkat stood up and opened the door. He looked at all the dirty clothes. Gamzee looked longingly at his recupercoon.  His patron shut the door.   
                                “Correction,” he said, “First order of business is to keep you the fuck away from that sopor slime.”   
                He looked at the door. Like every other door of its kind in paradox space, it locked from the inside.  He had to leave the room to go do laundry, but he couldn’t expect the addict to stay in an unlocked room, no matter how honor-bound the addict was.    
                                Karkat sighed. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m going to need to tie you up.”   
                                Gamzee nodded. “If that’s how a brother wants to get it on, go right on ahead.”   
                                “Gah, no, I told you not to take it that way! This isn’t any kinky shit, I just want to restrain you so you don’t dive into the slime again.”   
                Karkat took out some rope from his sylladex. Rope was always useful.  He put Gamzee’s hands behind his back and tied them together. He then tied that to the pedestal of the sink. He left enough room for Gamzee to use the toilet. He put a towel around Gamzee’s waist to serve as a loincloth, and a towel over his shoulders as a shawl.   
                                “Now stay here,” Karkat said.   
                He went to the next room and started picking up all the clothes. He was sure some of them weren’t Gamzee’s but there’d be time enough to sort them out.  He looked around for somethin g to put them in and sighed loudly when he saw there was nothing. He carefully capchalogued them so they’d collectively fit in his sylladex instead of taking up space as individual cards. Several of his items flew out during his attempts. He had gotten rid of his encryption modus sweeps ago but he still had problems with his sylladex sometimes.    
                He walked downstairs. While he was cursing not asking where the garment turbulence apparatus was, he heard a series of rapid knocks on the door. A millisecond later, the door flew open. A tall female seatroll stepped in. She wore a sleeveless shorty wetsuit with a long decorative pull-tag and gold hoop finrings. She looked like she’d just smelled something bad.   
                                She asked, “Who are you? Wait, I don’t care? Where’s Gamz?”   
                                Karkat answered, “He’s no t seeing anyone tonight.”   
                                “What, is he dead?”   
                                “No, he just wants to spend some time alone without being bothered by hanger-ons like you.”   
                                “Ha, seriously? Are you really getting possessive of that slut? It’s not like we can’t both have fun with him.” She gestured obscenely. “You can take the nook and I can take the bulge.”   
                                “Look, lady, he’s not a fucking vehicle! You can’t just call shotgunkind!”   
                                She laughed and said in a soft sultry voice, “You’re so cute and clever! Listen, I already got a matesprit, but with your pluck, I think you’d make a great kismesis.”   
                She pulled down her zipper a little and leaned over.    
                                “Come on, little troll,” she purred, “I can share.”   
                Karkat licked his lips. She was attractive in a horribly obnoxious way. Perfect kismesis material. He pushed down his lust bladder and took out his sickle.   
                                “Taking out the weapons so early?” she said, “You are so totally waxing for me.”   
                                “Get the fuck out of this hive before I slice off your puffed-up face fins and ruin your plastic surgeon’s hard work!”   
                                “You’re a mudsucker and probably a mudblood and you’re ordering moi around?” She took out a curling iron. “Bring it.”   
                With practiced reflexes Karkat sliced off her zipper pull. She gasped and looked at his angry face. She put away her weapon but not her pride.   
                                “Tell Gamz Siebe dropped by,” she said and turned away.   
                Karkat walked back up to the hygieneblock.  His patient was sitting against the wall, both shivering and sweating.    
            He asked, “Are you doing okay?”   
            Gamzee answer, “Yeah.”   
                               “Hey, where’s your washing machine?”   
                                “Downstairs…I think, leftmost door.”   
                                “Thanks. I’ll have some real clothes for you soon.”   
                 Karkat turned to leave, and then thought of something else to say.   
                                “Some bimbo came by looking for you,” he said.   
                                “What’s her name…ah fuck like I could remember.”   
                                “Siebe. She’s a seatroll with straight, kinda blunt horns that stick out at a 45º angle.”   
                Gamzee didn’t say anything.   
                                Karkat added, “She’s got nice tight boobs.”   
                                Gamzee finally replied, “Yeah, I already knew who you were talking about, just couldn’t get my voice on. Did she bring along anyone?”   
                                “No, just her, thank god.”   
                                “She usually comes by with her matesprit what’s-his-name Gor something. Guess she finally came by to nub me.” Gamzee gave a coughing laugh.   
                Karkat gave him a weird look. He both wanted and didn’t want to think of her bone nub.   
                                “Yeah, her boyfriend’s bone bulge is too motherfucking huge for her, so she takes my bulge while he takes my nook. They’re my best motherfucking friends.” Gamzee turned dark. “I wanna RIP OFF HIS BONE BULGE AND STUFF IT IN HER EYE!”   
                Gamzee started coughing again until he threw up a little. Karkat got down on his knees and cleaned up the small mess.   
                                “Fuck,” he said, “take it easy and don’t think about those assholes!”   
                                 “They’re my friends,” the shivering troll said as he slowly tipped down to the floor.   
                                “Friends don’t use friends as sexual furniture. Damnit, friends don’t pail with friends unless they’re in a dedicated concupiscent relationship!”   
                He wanted for his friend to reply. His friend’s dry mouth moved a little but he didn’t say anything. Finally, he said,   
                                “Weren’t you the one with the romance and shit? You were always so naïve.”   
                Karkat didn’t reply. He knew it was true that plenty of trolls engaged in casual sex despite the stigma. He still didn’t think it was right. He was a traditionalist about such things.   
                                He said, “I’ll go get you a glass of water after I start the laundry.”


	5. Chapter 5

  


As Karkat was going downstairs again to check on the third load of laundry, he heard a knock on the door.

                                “GO HOME, THE BROTHEL’S CLOSED!” he answered.   
                                A sweet cheerful voice replied, “Should we have made an appointment?”   
                Karkat was so glad the door was between him and Aradia. He had forgotten he had trolled Sollux and asked him to go to his hive, bring him some of his stuff, and escort his lusus. Apparently he had brought his patron with him.   
                Karkat opened the door. Aradia was there, with Sollux and Crabdad behind her.   
                                “Fuck, Aradia, I haven’t seen you in seasons,” he said.   
                                She said without any anger, “Sorry but that’s your fault. I live closer to you than Sollux.”   
                                “You look healthier than you used to. You used to look like a ghost.”   
                                “Thank you.”   
                                Sollux leaned his head in. “Hey, athth-hole, I’m here too.”   
                                “Come on, I was expecting you but not her. She’s a surprise. Why the hell did you bring her anyway? No offense, Aradia.”   
                                “None taken.”   
                                Sollux answered, “S-he’s good with medicine, I don’t know how cauthe trollth her cathte don’t get that schoolfeeding program. Bethidethe s-he wanted to.”   
                 Karkat usually talked with Sollux online, so he hadn’t noticed his lisp was getting better.  He always paused before correctly pronouncing the s sound.    
                His lusus was getting crabby standing outside, so the guests came in.   
                                “So,” Aradia asked, “Where’s the patient?”   
                                “He’s up in the hygieneblock,” Karkat answered as he gestured up the stairs, “I had to tie him to the sink so he wouldn’t go on another binge.” Karkat looked at Sollux. “Don’t give me that look, at least he’s dressed now.”   
                                “Now?” he asked with an obnoxious grin. Karkat refused to answer.   
                                “Have you fed him?” she asked.   
                                 “Of course I’ve feed him, what do you take me for? I gave him some porridgemeal.”   
                                “Have you giving him anything to drink? You should only give him water or better yet an electrolyte solution.”   
                                “Just tap water. Didn’t know I had to give him anything fancy.”   
                                “It’s okay. Has he been able to keep everything down?”   
                                “He’s been puking a little,  but he’s mostly keeps it down.”   
                                “How are his stools?”   
                                Sollux gagged, “Oh yuck, AA.”   
                                Karkat snapped at him, “Don’t listen in on a medical discussion if you’ve got such a fucking sad digestion organ.” He turned to Aradia. “They’re a little watery.”   
                                “You’ll need to keep his fluids up. Let’s go see him now.”   
                Karkat set Crabdad by the door to guard against any unwelcome guests. The three trolls then walked up to the hygieneblock. Gamzee was sitting there, now wearing pants and socks, with a jacket drapped over him. He looked up when they entered, and then bowed his head.   
                                “You didn’t total clothe him,” Sollux complained.   
                                “I couldn’t with his arms tied, moron,” Karkat shot back.   
                Aradia kneeled down next to Gamzee and lifted his face. He looked at her and for a second Karkat was afraid he would kiss her.  His over sexualized instinct was defeated by either his will or more likely his sickness. She looked at his eyes.   
                                “Dilated,” she said, “Poor thing.”   
                She took one of the cleaner towels and dabbed his face. He moaned.   
                                “Don’t worry, Gamzee,” she cooed, “It’s me, Aradia. I’m a friend.”   
                Gamzee moved his hips oddly. Karkat kept chanting to himself, “Don’t pop a boner, you crazy slut, she isn’t that type of friend.”   
                She looked at Karkat’s rope work and frowned.   
                                “You tied his hands too tightly and you pulled them back a bit too far,” she said, “Rope isn’t the best for bondage anyway, especially such rough rope like this.”   
                She took out of her sylladex a pair of fancy blue cuffs with soft lining. Karkat stared at them.   
                Aradia looked at him. “What?”   
“S-he’s matethprite’s with Equiuth Zahhak,” Sollux said, as if that was the only explanation needed.   
                                Karkat sputtered, “What? Matesprites? Not kismesisitude or hatefriends? How long has that shit been going on?”   
                                “S-tarted sh-ortly after sh-e got her new artificial heart. Theems he decide sh-e wath fit to be a romantic partner since sh-e technically had the ‘heart of a bloo blood’ or thome sh-it like that.”   
                                “Wasn't that more than a sweep ago! Why didn’t you tell me?”   
                                 “I told you, KK, I don’t like to…talk about other people.”   
                                “You sperging moron, it’s not gossip if it’s about your own patron.”   
                                Aradia spoke up, “You could have asked me about it.”   
                                “Yeah, sorry for not keeping in touch,” he said, “But I assumed your spinning relationship would either land on kismesisitude or void. I was surprised enough that you two got together in the first place.”   
                                “Why?” she asked.   
                                “Well, I wasn’t surprised Equius had a crush of some sorts on you. He’d always troll me asking ‘Where is your fellow lowblood Aradia?’ like we all shared some sort of hivemind. When I told him to go ask you he got all nervous. He was totally wrapped in towels,”   
                                “That’s why I was surprised you wanted any sort of concupiscent relationship with him. Hatefriends, yes, I can see. He does provoke a sort of bile fascination. But anything involving actually touching him? Ewww.”   
                                She answered, “He doesn’t actually smell that bad. He doesn’t eat meat so his sweat doesn’t stink. Plus, he looks really sexy in his wet matebeater.”   
                                Karkat face palmed. “Ughh. TMI, TM-fucking-I!   
                                “You athked,” Sollux pointed out, “God, even I’m not that much of a prude.”   
                                Karkat continued, “Okay, so you got some sort of weird lady boner for him.  But why not just hate him?”   
                                “I did at first. He seemed worse than his neighbor, and you know how I felt about her. At least she isn’t a bigot. He had to bring up my blood every time we talked. Even Eridan doesn’t do that!”   
                                She continued, “But as I got to know him better, I started to pity him.”   
                                “Pity him?” Sollux interjected, “Guy’th a rich as fuck blueblood. He liveth in a manthion with all the robot partth and thhitty porn he could ever want.  He’th never dumpthter dived in his life.”   
                                “He also has problems controlling his power. He really doesn’t want to hurt people,” she said, “Don’t be jealous. That’s also what attracted me to you.”   
                                “I’m not jealouth.”   
                                “All right, I get that he’s a mess and you think he’s a hot one, but how’d you get out of that mobius reacharound? He pities you, you hate him, he hates you for rejecting him, you pity him for being such a sad sack of tears, he hates that you think he’s weak, you hate him because he’s turning down your kindness, he pities you…”   
                                “Yeth, we get it, KK, you watch a lot of ‘documentarieth’.”   
                                She answered, “The normal way such reacharounds are solved: he found a true kismesis.”   
                                “Oh fuck, that anti-social bigot has th ree quadrants filled and I…so who is the unlucky troll?”   
                                “A blueblood named Lupine Durand. Equius was patrolling around Nepeta’s hive when he encountered the troll who’d been badgering her. They started wrestling and one thing lead to another and…it was just like one of your movies.”   
                                “One I’d delete immediately,” he mumbled.   
                                She continued, “He didn’t like me being with Equius. Not out of jealousy but because I was such a lowblood. He didn’t even think Equius should be in a moirallegiance with a midblood. I think he still doesn’t really like me. He respects Nepeta as a hunter, but he only accepts me as an honorary highblood.”   
                                She added, “We do work together sometime s, even if we usually aren’t in the same room. We play good dom/bad dom.”   
                                “Yeah, s-he’th the nice one. That’th how thcary he ith…oww!” Sollux yelped as Aradia elbowed him.   
Karkat found all this fascinating, but he also didn’t want to hear this. It was one thing watching romance play out among beautiful strangers, but it was another thing when it was among his friends, especially one who he once felt…close to.   
                Aradia finished adjusting Gamzee’s bondage. He was now wearing cuffs and was chained to the sink.  She dabbed his head again and wiped off his drool.   
                                “I have some stuff to help you two out,” she said.   
                                “Oh yeah,” Sollux added, “I need to give you your sh-it. Whole reathon I hauled my atht h here.”   
                                “You can fly, asshole, it isn’t that hard for you,” Karkat said.   
                                “But Aradia can’t. Ahh fuck, I would have come out here even if I had to crawl, KK.”   
                                “Yeah, you can’t resist my magnetic personality.”   
                                “Magnetic in that it ruinth every computer you come near.”   
                                “Right back at you, dumpass.” Karkat turned to Aradia. “Will he be okay?”   
                                “He just seems to be having a particularly bad hangover right now. He’s not in withdrawal,” she answered.   
                                “Oh, that’s go od.”   
                                “Yeah, this is the best part! It’s all downhill from here,” she chirped.   
                                “Oh fuck.”   
                                “I’m sure you can handle it. Just make sure you keep a constant eye on him.”   
                She turned to Gamzee.   
                                “I’m glad to see you haven’t died,” she said, “I wouldn’t like that.”   
                She gracefully picked herself up off the floor. Sollux followed. The three walked out of the hygieneblock and into the respiteblock. Aradia gave Karkat some medicine and various other medical supplies, while Sollux dumped Karkat's stuff on the floor. After checking on Gamzee yet again, Karkat walked them to the door.   
                                 “I’m also glad you’re well,” Aradia said to Karkat, “I wish we hadn’t lost touch.”   
                                “It happens. Trolls suck at friendship,” he said, “Plus, spiderbitch ruined everything.”   
                                “I don’t think she’s entirely to blame,” she said, and then looked off into the distance, “Sometimes I think if when we were younger, if we had all come together on some sort of quest, maybe we would have been closer. Sometimes I can foresee that alternate past.”   
                                “Oh, that freaky vithion,” Sollux said, but in a strangely uncynical tone.   
                Before they could leave, Karkat asked something that had been on his mind.   
                                “Sp eaking of friends, have you heard anything from Terezi?” He hoped he sounded casual, but he knew he didn’t.   
                Aradia’s face looked blank, so he turned to Sollux.   
                                “Sollux, she was closer to you than me, so how is she?”   
                                Sollux sighed. “Sh-e’s gotten really thcary.”   
                                “Scarier than before?”   
                                “Thhe’s gotten all political or thomething. Like thhe’s planning on wearing her dragon thuit and thtrating a flathh mob in front of the Thenate in protest of chalk tariffth or thomething.”   
                                “That’s more weird than scary, but okay.”   
                Karkat motioned for Crabdad to step out of the way so his friends could leave. As they walked out, he heard them talking.   
                                “S-o, whothe place are we going back to?”   
                                “We’re going to Equius’.”   
                                “What?”   
                                “Sollux, you promised if I came with you to Gamzee’s you’d come with me to Equius’!”   
                                “But Karkat is both our friendth, while Equius is nobodieth friend!”   
                                “You still promised!”   
                They faded out of hearing. Karkat walked back up to the hygieneblock.


	6. Chapter 6

Karkat tidied up the towels around the hygieneblock. He was wondering why Gamzee had so many towels when the troll spoke up.   
                                “So Equius’ got those quadrants filled?”   
                Karkat jumped a little and turned to the now moving troll.   
                                “Oh shit,” he said, “We were talking like you weren’t even there.”   
                                “Man, I kind of wasn’t there. But now I remember what you said,” Gamzee replied, “Huh. Shit. Equius Zahhak. I remember him now that you've talked about him.”   
                                “He’s the one obsessed with blood and beast dongs and being STRONG. I can see why you’d want to forget him.”   
                                 “Yeah, I know, I know that motherfucker. So he doesn’t have any concupiscent quadrants empty?”   
                                “I’m just as surprised as you are.”   
                Gamzee rolled his head to the side, and then rolled it down.   
                                “I wanted to be the one who filled him,” he said.   
                                “You were flushed, or…WAXED for him?”   
                                “I don’t even know. He’s probably not my type but I ain’t got a clue who my type is. I don’t think I would’ve given a shit if I didn’t think he had something for me. Even high and online I could tell he was popping boners like riders pop wheelies.”   
                                “Uugh, I would hate being the o bject of his attention,” Karkat said and then realized he probably shouldn’t be showing such obvious disgust with his moirail’s feelings, “So, you wanted his attention?”   
                                “I would have knelt down before that motherfucker and done any crazy ass shit he asked,” Gamzee confessed while gesturing.   
                Don’t be disgusted, don’t be disgusted, Karkat chanted to himself.   
                                Gamzee bowed his head. “But it sounds like he’s the one wanting to get his kneel on. Poor old Gamzee wasn’t his type!” He started to laugh bitterly. “Pretty stupid to get all down about it. He wasn’t even in my think pan until tonight.”   
                                Karkat could understand Gamzee’s disappointment at hearing about Aradia <3 Equius. He had a crush on Aradia whe n he was very little, like maybe just two sweeps? He didn’t really know about romance or the quadrants, but he knew he liked her, and he really really wanted her to like him. He wanted her to pity him. She was the lowest blooded troll he had ever met. It wasn’t that massive a crush and he wasn’t even that annoyed when Sollux and Aradia red-dated for two nights. Now that Aradia was in a stable, long-term matespritship with Equius, he was lamenting his loss.   
                                “No,” Karkat said, “The world is so chocked full of regrets it’s normal one or two will get stuck in your protein chute.”   
                Gamzee laughed and coughed.   
                                Karkat asked, “Would you have really done anything he asked? I mean, not the kinky sex stuff, what I mean is, would you have given up sopor slime and any other drug you’ve been pouring on your think pan?”   
                                “That motherfucker did ask me all the time to kick the tin. He was all blue faced about it cause I’m supposed to be better than him and he can’t boss me around, but he did order me to. I never did. I think I liked to keep him all concerned and besides…ha ha, kicking sucks! But there was this one time I told him I would. Honestly told him. I said, what the hell, it’s my wriggling night, I should do resolution shit like that. But things came up…”   
                                “What things?”   
                                “My dad came around. Almost came around. Thought I would see him soon, since it was my night after all. It was such a big let-down I had to treat myself to something. Made myself my own wriggling night cake. Gobbled up the whole damn thing. I was happy and then things got w orse…”   
  
\---   
Karkat didn’t hear the whole story of how things got worse that night. He heard rambling bits and pieces. Gamzee filled in more of the details later, and Karkat learned the rest from investigating with Feferi’s help.   
                It was the night after Gamzee’s sixth wriggling night and he was sitting on the beach, waiting for his sea-bond lusus to come for a belated party. He was out of it, like normal, when a seadweller walked out of the sea towards him. She was nine and a half sweeps old, almost ready to take a maturity shuttle off Alternia. She was only a few degrees lower than Feferi, and she certainly looked more the part of a traditional empress than the actual heir apparent. She had four horns, kind of like Sollux, and they formed a crown. She was very tall and statuesque, and she wore a long black sleeveless gown and several strings of tiny pearls. Karkat found out her name from Feferi, but it isn’t important. What she did was important.   
                She strode up to Gamzee, but he was like usual spacing out. She was offended that the landdweller had not noticed her presences,  so she hit him with the butt of her trident. He noticed her then and went to take out his clubs but he had forgotten them.  He was too confused to do anything. She didn’t attack him again but she told him landdwellers should stay off the beach, and that she could have him culled if she wanted to. She could kill him right now for his insolence and that would be perfectly all right under the law. He begged her not to.   
                                She said, “We will spare you, if you pleasure us.”   
                Gamzee didn’t know what she meant by that at first. He started doing traditional Alternian break dancing and slam poetry, but she told him that wasn’t what she wanted. She grabbed his hair, lif ted up her dress, and shoved his face into her crotch.   
                So he pleasured her.   
                Afterwards, he curled up and started crying. He still wasn’t sure she wasn’t going to cull him, even after he made her come so hard her genetic material was dripping off his face.  The royal then did something very strange. She sat down beside him and put her arm around him. She let him press his dirty face, dripping with paint, tears, and cum, against her shoulder. She patted him on the back and told him he had performed far above her expectations, and that she would never kill him or hurt him. Why did she do this? Feferi believed that she did pity him, and felt guilty for what she had done, but she tended to see the good in all trolls. Karkat thought she was just playing a cruel game with his blood-pumping organ. Though she never said it, she made him believe they were matesprites.   
                Th e next night, Gamzee sat again on the beach. He was hoping his dad would come along so he could tell her he had a girlfriend now, and she was older, and she was pretty but scary and she had a cool color which he think meant something important. Instead, his girlfriend visited him. She had told him that “we will pay a visit soon”, but he didn’t know she wasn’t using the royal we. She brought three sea troll friends. This time she didn’t touch him. She just watched as the largest of them climbed on top of him and opened him up.   
                Gamzee soothed both his pains in sopor slime.  A few nights later, one of the two sea trolls who had held him down came over to his hive. He acted like nothing had happened. He just wanted the land aristocrat to entertain him that morning. Gamzee tried his best, but the sea troll was a picky guest. He refused not only Faygo, but any other drink or food his host gave him. He sat on the sofa, playing with hi s rings, waiting for Gamzee to do something.  So Gamzee pleasured him.   
                After his blowjob, the noble troll stayed the whole day. The whole day!, Gamzee said with excitement every time. (Karkat felt guilty he had never stayed over at his best friend’s hive.)  Though Gamzee felt guilty the next evening, he was happy he got someone to spend so much time with him. That troll left, but there were many more after him. If Gamzee felt bad, if he ever felt like he just wasn’t being true to his feelings, if his body was sore from the rough sex, if he needed something to get aroused, he’d get high. And that’s how he sunk so low.   
  
\---   
                After that bit of exposition, Gamzee was mostly silent for the rest of the night.  Karkat rubbed Gamzee's back reluctantly and stayed with him a while. He then went next door and started cleaning the respiteblock. He looked at the red recuperacoon and wondered what he would do with it. Aradia told him the patient couldn’t use sopor slime, even topically, while there was still some in his system. She didn’t really say what Karkat was supposed to do once Gamzee was detoxified. She said they would think of a plan. That was just like her. Karkat pushed the damn thing out of the way the best he could.   
                Karkat did various things around the hive, checking in regularly on Gamzee. As he set up his own stuff, he realized that he might have to move in with his high-maintenance moirail. He had previously looked down on trolls who moved in together after one pale date, but in this case it was necessary. He just worried about the hassle of changing his address. The Empire didn’t really like its underaged subjects going around switching hives. It would be especially hard since he and his moirail were so far apart on the hemospectrum. Gamzee Makara was the highest of the bluebloods, a land aristocrat, wh ile Karkat Vantas….well, on paper he was a low level greenblood. That was a bureaucratic mixup he didn’t want to fix.  A lowblood moving in with a highblood was usually seen by the bureaucracy as servant boarding with his master instead of as a romantic relationship. That could cause problems later on. He needed legal help. Karkat grumbled about this until he realized he was a good excuse to talk to Terezi.   
                For now, he made dinner. There wasn’t a lot of food in the food preparation block, but he made due.  He would have to get more food later. He went upstairs with Crabdad, worried about his momentary absence. Gamzee cringed when they entered, and it took Karkat a moment to realize it was because of his lusus. The giant crab reacted to Gamzee's discomfort with a little freak out of his own until his charge calmed him down. Karkat sat next to the near-orphan. Poor guy never had a lusus around and other people’s lusii probably ju st reminded him of that. Crabdad could be a bother with his pinching and grumbling, but I’d made Karkat the troll he was tonight. His pinches made the troll’s skin tough and the regular fights helps boost his blocking better than Karkat's silly solitary practice could. More importantly, his lusus had protected him from the harsh world of Alternia. If the Old Goat were around, he could have protected his charge from the seadwellers.   
                Karkat spoonfed Gamzee while eating himself and throwing Crabdad some kippers. Afterward, as the sun rose, they talked. Well, Karkat talked about everything and anything while Gamzee listened. Crabdad shuffled back downstairs to sleep by the door. Soon it was cocoon time. Karkat again kept vigil while Gamzee tried to sleep. Every half-hour the troll awoke with daymares, and he would grab his patron and babble on. Karkat soothed him back to sleep, grumbling songs like his lusus used to when he was a wriggler . This worked somehow. By the end of the day, Karkat noticed Gamzee had been sleeping straight for over two hours. He was cheered by this until it came to him that perhaps Gamzee wasn’t fighting his daymares as much as he was fighting waking.   



	7. Chapter 7

Gamzee woke up right when the sun fell. He was tired of sleeping and he told Karkat that. He was feeling better, though he still felt that general hangover malaise.  He was well enough he could perform his own ablation.  His patron uncuffed him so that he could get in the trap.  Karkat supervised Gamzee,  though he mostly looked at the door and away from Gamzee’s nakedness.

                              After a while, Karkat asked, “What were your diurnal delusions about anyway?”   
                                “You really want to know?” Gamzee asked, “They were pretty motherfucking scary.”   
                                “Psychiatrists say that recalling dreams helps the mind recover,” Karkat said, “Or it totally fucks up the mind by forcing it to digest the vomit it spewed out. One or the other.”   
                        “Scientists always be lying. They pissing me off.”   
                Still, Gamzee considered this.   
                                “In the last one, the one before I quit that shit, I dreamed I was choking Equius,” he said slowly, “And I was on top of this weird jar with the Old Goat hang around in it. No, I wasn’t choking him on that, I was on the jar before a leapt down and went into murder mode. But first I was, what’s-her-name, the blind sister…”   
                                “Terezi, and why the fuck were you Terezi?”   
                                “I don’t know, it’s dream shit.  And Equius said I was a stupid not-quite-blue blood, but then I took off my really awesome shades and I was Gamzee again. And I shot him with an arrow, which I think turned into a bon e bulge. Then I was in front of him, and I was choking him, not with my hands, but with a bow string.”   
                                “Did he grief back?”   
                                “It was my dream, so the motherfucker didn’t! Ninja had no air, but he was talking, without moving his mouth, saying shit like how he always loved me, like a son.”   
                                “Like a son?”   
                                “Yeah, like he was my lusus and I was his charge! But he was also getting off on it, like his bone bulge was out, but it was also an arrow. He think he died then, but I got on top of his arrow and pierced myself, and it was like the motherfucking heavens opened and an angel came down!”   
                Gamzee laughed a little.   
                                 “If you noticed me popping a boner, it was probably because of that.”   
                                Karkat quickly said, “I didn’t notice anything like that and it was probably your bladder.”   
                                “But then Equius turned into an adult troll, but it wasn’t him grown up, it was some dashing sea troll with broad ass shoulders and a butt chin. He kept shouting ‘Subjuggulator subjuggulator I’m tryin to tell a fuckin joke here!’ but a voice from me, that wasn’t me, kept saying ‘HONK honk HONK honk!’ And then the Empress came in, but it was my first matesprite.”   
                                “Your first matesprite?”   
                                “Guess my so-called first matesprite. The one on the beach that night. She wasn’t an adult but she was incredible tall, like communal hivestem tall. She said it was time for my performance review. She said I was always very good at giving head and she laughed and all these severed heads rained down like a wicked hail.”   
                Gamzee laughed a little.   
                                He mumbled to himself, “Guess that is a very good joke.”   
                Karkat gave a disgusted look.   
                                Gamzee continued, “So she said I was very good at giving head, but my bone bulge went limp all the time.  She said the word weak like she was some sort of girl Equius. It then popped into my head that I didn't have my clubs.”   
                                “You were using your clubs before?”   
                                “Nah, it’s like I wasn't even thinking of my weapon before and poof! It was gone. I was totally naked except for my old face paint.  She said given my skill set, the best position for me in this empire would be prone. And then I was, and this huge musclebeast, this huge dog was on top of me. Dog had a huge knot in its dong.  It was tearing me up, not just my nook, but my entire fucking body, but kept staying in one piece.”   
                Karkat shuddered.   
                                Gamzee continued, more sad then manic like before, “I think I knew it was a dream then, cause I asked the Empress permission to wake up, and she said if I did my project manager would be fired, like out of a cannon. And then I saw you. You were the leader. I couldn’t let you down,”   
                                “So I kept sleeping.”   
                                 Karkat asked, “You didn’t wake up?”   
                                “Course I woke up, bro!” he said, and then started to look around wildly, “Unless you saying this is still a dream?”   
                                “No it’s not, and if it was I’d be my dream, so I’d be the one drowning in blood. I mean, you kept sleeping in your dream?”   
                                “I wasn’t sleeping, I was getting raped!”   
                                “Forget it, let’s get you out of the trap.”   
                Gamzee stood up, and Karkat wrapped a towel around him. He dried his moirail off, though half-way through his moirail took the towel and finished the job himself. Gamzee dropped the towel when he was done but Karkat grabbed another towel and told him to wrap himself up in it. Karkat opened the respiteblock door. Gamzee peered in nervously, but his patron took his hand and pulled him into his own room. The recupercoon was out of sight. There was a new piece of furniture in the room, and it took Gamzee a while to recognize it as his old dresser. Karkat had tried to stuff as much as he could into it before giving up and pilling things somewhat neatly on and next to it.   
                                “Yeah,” Karkat said, “I couldn’t fit all your goddamn clothes into your garment containment unit so I had to just stack them up. Have you just been getting more clothes instead of washing them? It can’t be a fashion thing because it’s all the same shirt and pants cloned endlessly.”   
                                “Actually…” Gamzee explained, “There are a few tiny little differences in the polka dots…”   
                                “Knew it. Fucking highbloods.”   
                                “But yeah, I did just get more shit instead of taking care of what I had.”   
                                “Ha, knew it!”   
                                “And…” Gamzee said as he looked at a garbage bag in the corner labeled “FUCK NO”, “People just came by with stuff for me to wear.”   
                                “Ahh fuck, I was just going to pretend the Concupiscent Garment Fairy dropped by your hive every moon segment.”   
                                “He he he, no fairies ever paid me a motherfucking visit.”   
                Karkat crossed the room to the dresser.   
                                “I’m going to get you something decent and non-maid uniform to wear,” he said.   
                Gamzee dropped his towel. Karkat lunged forward as if it were an action movie and he could do bullet time. The towel hit the floor anyway and Karkat face palmed. It was a lost cause teaching Gamzee modesty. Even before he became a slut he wasn’t very good at figuring out how often he should wear clothes. Karkat grabbed some boxers and threw them over to Gamzee. The naked boy immediately put them on. His patron brought over a shirt, some pants, and some socks. Gamzee was fine with the shirt and pants but he balked a little over the socks.   
                                “I didn’t even know I had those,” he said.   
                                “Well you do, and normal people wear socks with their shoes,” Karkat shot back.   
                Gamzee tried to put on the socks stand ing up before falling over. Karkat put the socks on for him. The clown’s big feet looked weirder now that the troubled youth hadn’t grown as tall as Karkat and everyone else expected. It must be his poor lifestyle, Karkat thought. The skinny boy was still taller than him, damnit. Karkat looked up at his bare face, and then looked at the posters on the wall.   
                                “You still into that stupid ass religion of yours?” he asked.   
                                “Sure, I still roll with the family,” Gamzee answered, and then added sadly, “But I haven’t prayed in a long long time.”     
                                “Why aren’t you wearing that sticky gross paint anymore?”   
                                “Sometime a ninja has to go undercover on his assignments, cause the empire be hatin g.”   
                Karkat gave him a skeptical look.   
                                Gamzee then said, “Plus my friends thought I looked better this way.”   
                Karkat looked over Gamzee’s face. He did look better without the makeup. Handsome, even. The heavy makeup was bad for his complexion and Karkat had noticed little bumps barely concealed by white the few times he had seen Gamzee in person.  The concerned patron still didn’t like the idea of him giving up his habits for that group.   
                                “Those fucking fake ‘friends’ of yours just want a clean canvas for their genetic material,” he growled, “Ruin their game and put on that white paint.”   
                                “You like my old face?”   
                                “No, I hate it, but I hate this new one even more.”   
                Gamzee frowned.   
                                “No, not like that, it’s a good face, but it isn’t yours. If you want to make yourself up as a clown that’s your damn prerogative. You’re a highblood, and the sea trolls are too tacky themselves to make a fuss.”   
                Gamzee stood up and clenched his right hand in a salute.   
                                He yelled, “Right on, brother! I won’t let them fuck around with me. I’m a goddamn prophet of the gods and I should act like one! The Mirthful Messiahs wouldn’t dance around naked with genetic material all dripping down their thighs just to get an applause!”   
                                “Um, I hope not.”   
                                 “No, they wouldn’t! Motherfucker, get me some paint!”   
                Karkat got up and looked through the dresser.   
                                “I can’t find any. Don’t think I even saw it when I was cleaning up.”   
                                “Oh,” Gamzee said, and sat down without finishing his quest.   
                                “We can buy some later. I’ll get my lusus…I’ll get Crabdad to go buy some when he does the shopping tonight.”   
                Gamzee looked over at the dresser.   
                                “Where did the mirror go?” he asked.   
                                “What mirror?”   
                                “It was one of those…wha tcha call it…varsity? No, a vanity. That shit’s called a vanity.”   
                                “It was like that when I found it.”   
                                “Guess I ripped it off some time ago. Didn’t like the magic little fellow that lives in there.”   
                                “It’s not magic, it’s just light bouncing off the surface and into your eyes.”   
                                “And it’s a miracle that light knows what it’s supposed to do.”   
                Karkat helped Gamzee off the floor and they went downstairs to eat. Gamzee still felt sick but his appetite was much better. He ate a lot, though he also vomited and shat a lot too. Karkat had to send his lusus out much earlier than he expected, and he had him put the bill on Gamzee’s tab. Crabdad being Crabdad, he mostly brought roe cubes instead of what Karkat had ordered him to buy, but he also bought some cheap bargain bin movie grubs. Karkat grumbled about his guardian’s poor cinematic choices, but they watched them anyway. Gamzee asked questions about every little thing and Karkat both shushed him and explained how terrible all the plot twists were. Eventually, Gamzee stopped asking. Crabdad freaked out whenever he saw reddish blood, which just freaked out Gamzee, until his charge sent him downstairs for guard duty. That day, instead of forcing Gamzee to sleep, they both just stayed awake and talked. Gamzee kept falling asleep anyway, but he’d always wake up soon. The next evening Gamzee continued to do well.   
Until he broke a window.


	8. Chapter 8

Karkat ran upstairs the minute he heard the sound of breaking glass. Gamzee was standing in front of the broken window with his back to Karkat.   
                                Karkat yelled, “What the fuck happened did you have an accident did you fall over why are you bleeding?”   
                                Gamzee replied, “The window was looking at me…”   
                                Karkat asked, “The window was…what’s that suppose to mean?”   
                                “…SO I HAD TO TAKE IT OUT!”   
                Gamzee turned around. He was holding his bleeding right hand. There were still glass shards in his hand, but on his face there was only a huge smile.   
                                “How nice of you to visit ,” he said.   
                                “You really fucking punched the window, let me look at your…”   
                                Gamzee’s smile turned into a snarl. “IT TOOK YOU LONG ENOUGH, MOTHERFUCKER.”   
                                “Damnit, Gamzee, it took me only fifteen fucking seconds for me to get up here and I trusted you to stay put for fifteen minutes!”   
                Gamzee stepped forwards towards Karkat, ignoring the glass shards.   
                                “Really? I counted it being much longer than that,” he said with an innocent smile.   
                                “Well sorry I don’t know the exact fucking millisecond, but I am trying to be a good moirail.”   
                                “Try?” Gamzee’s smile faded, “YOU NEVER TRIED BEFORE.”   
                Karkat started stepping backwards.   
                                “Stop yelling at me…” he said softly, and then yelled, “Just give me your wrist and I’ll bandage us together so you’ll never have to suffer me being out of your sight for a goddamn minute!”   
                                “A minute?” Gamzee laughed, “You think this is about a minute? I know you kept me waiting for more than a minute. MORE LIKE A SOLAR SWEEP.”   
                                “A solar sweep? Has the sopor completely fucked your sense of time?”   
                                “Nah, I’m too good at waiting for people to come. ALL MY LIFE I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR PEOPLE TO COME FOR ME.”   
     � �                   “What is this about? Is this about something someone else did? What your lusus did?”   
                                “This is about you, patron. This is about us, and the GODDAMN BEHEMOTH IN THE BLOCK.”   
                Gamzee somehow slide up into Karkat’s face and shut the door behind him.   
                                “Not a lot of space in this respiteblock, is there?” he said.   
                                “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”   
                                “That’s it, that’s right: YOU NOT TALKING TO ME. No IMs, no emails, no phone calls, not even a motherfucking flying courierbeast. FOR MORE THAN A FUCKING SWEEP. Everyone else on Alternia comes by and YET MY MOTHERFUCKING BEST FRIEND WON’T VISIT."   
                                “Gamzee, you nooksniffer, I…” Karkat couldn’t think of anything to say. He looked down at the floor instead.   
                                “Yeah, that’s right, run out of words. Got no words to spare for little old me.”   
                Karkat was shivering from the sight of blood dripping on the floor, but he was more afraid to look into Gamzee’s face.   
                                “I’m…I’m sorry, you asshole! But I did come!”   
                                “Yeah, you came!” Gamzee said cheerfully, “YOU CAME BECAUSE OF MY TONGUE.”   
                Gamzee licked the side of Karkat’s face. Karkat whipped his head towards Gamzee.   
                                “No, no, stop it! I didn’t come for that!” he yelled.   
                                “LIAR. That’s the only reason anyone comes to see me. IT ONLY TOOK SO LONG CAUSE YOUR SHAME GLOBES HADN’T DROPPED YET.”   
                                “You dropped me an email, stupid!”   
                Gamzee stopped leaning over Karkat. He expressed surprise, and not in the odd showy way he had been showing before.   
                                Karkat continued, “I got an email from you four nights ago! I couldn’t understand it, but I knew I had to see you…I knew I had a pale crush on you.”   
                Gamzee continued to look confused. Then he gave a demonic smile.   
                                He said, “I remember that email. I remember it now. I wasn’t asking for pale. I WAS ASKING FOR PAIL.”   
                                “What? But you were the one freaking out that all I wanted was…” Gamzee grabbed Karkat’s crotch with his uninjured hand.   
                                “We can be kismesis IF JUST FOR ONE DAY,” he yelled.   
                Karkat tried to push his hand off but couldn’t.   
                                “I DON’T WANT YOU THAT WAY!” he screamed.   
                                “Giving me the reacharound? Feeling red for me?” Gamzee asked, “FILL ME UP WITH YOUR RED.”   
                                “I’m not getting near your nook to…red?”   
                Gamzee grabbed Karkat’s hand with his injuried hand. One of the glass shards pressed into Karkat’s hand. A dot of candy red appeared among the smeared indigo.   
                                “I knew it. I KNEW IT,” Gamzee said, “I WASN’T HALLUCINATING THAT NIGHT.”   
                Karkat pulled back his pricked hand.   
                                “You knew? All this time?”   
                                Gamzee didn’t answer that. “Come on and fuck me! Give me that final fucking humiliation! USED AS A PAIL BY MY OLDEST FRIEND, A FILTHY MUTANT!”   
                                “No!”   
                                “AM I SO GODDAMN USELESS EVEN TO YOU?”   
                Gamzee suddenly shoot up and looked off into the distance with a terrified look in his eyes. He then fell on the floor.   
                                Karkat snarled, “First you lick me, then you grab your crotch, now you’re presenting for me?”   
                But Gamzee couldn’t hear him. His eyes were looking at nothing as he convulsed on the floor.   
                                “Ha ha ha,” Karkat laughed nervously, “Nice folk dancing, but, uh, the shows over? Snap out of it, Gamzee, snap out of it!”   
                Gamzee didn’t stop convulsing.   
                                “Oh god. Oh god oh god oh god oh god. He’s having a fucking seizure.”   
                Karkat took everything out of his sylladex until he got to his cell phone. He called Aradia.   
                                She picked up before the second ring. “Aradia, I…”   
                                She interrupted, “Don’t worry, I’ll walk you through his episode!”   
                                “Walk me through what?” Karkat asked, “Oh shit, this is some obnoxious psychic thing isn’t it? Can’t you let me tell you what’s happening first before you freak me out by scrying all over me?”   
                                “Hmmm…nope, it’s easier if you just pretend that part of our conversation just happened.”   
                                “Okay, so Gamzee is bouncing all over the floor but you know that already what the fuck am I suppose to do?”   
                                “First, clear all that glass away and anything else that might be dangerous.”   
                                “Glass? How do you know there’s…stop doing that!”   
               Karkat cradled the cell phone against his neck and fell down on his knees. He tried pushing the glass with his hand. He cursed into phone as his hand got cut again.   
                                Aradia responded, “Don’t use your bare hands on the glass! Push it with something else!”   
                                Karkat sputtered out, “Fuck, now you tell…use your pre-cog earlier!”   
                He took her advice and swept the floor with a towel. He pushed everything he could away from Gamzee’s convulsing body.   
                                “Okay,” he said to Aradia, “All my shit’s far far away from him…oh fuck I don’t have a wallet don’t I need a wallet?”   
                                “What do you need a wallet for?”   
                                “I NEED A WALLET FOR WALLET PURPOSES!”   
                                “Huh? No, you don’t need a wallet. Do you have something to put under his head? Like a pillow?”   
                                “I have a towel! Is that good enough?”   
                                “Very good, turn him to his side and put the towel under his head.”   
                Karkat tiptoed over to Gamzee’s side and put down the phone.  He was afraid to touch him but he knew he had to. He put his hand on the patient’s jumping shoulder. The boy was shaking so much it was hard to roll him and Karkat ended up pushing him a bit too much. He placed the towel under the patient’s head.  He grabbed the phone again.   
                                “Okay, he’s on his side. What now?”   
                                “Good! His airways won’t get blocked now.”   
                                “HIS AIRWAYS COULD GET BLOCKED?”   
                                “Calm down, Karkat! You have to keep the patient calm too.”   
                                Karkat looked over at Gamzee. “Calm down, calm down, it’s okay,” he said to him, “I won’t let you die. If you die on me I will kill you, you asshole.” He went back to the phone, “Okay, now what?”   
                                “That didn’t sound very calming.”   
                                “I know, he’s still convulsing, what should I do?”   
                                “If my timing is right, it’s only been three minutes. It should stop on its own.”   
                                “Should? Did you foresee it?”   
                                “No, I didn’t see that much. Just the glass and the seizure and you calling.”   
                                “What happening if he doesn’t stop? Will he just keep dancing for the rest of his life? Will he be a vegetable? Will he be a fucking dancing vegetable?”   
                                “As I said, it should slow down soon, but if it doesn’t, I gave you some anticonvulsant…”   
                                “And I’ll need to break his thoraxplate and stab him in the heart with the needle, right?”   
                                “What? No. You just press the pen needle down. Don’t stab him!”   
                                “Okay, okay, I won’t, considered me schoolfed!”   
                Karkat looked at Gamzee. He was moving less but he was drooling like a caninebeast suffering from a viral nerve infection.  His eyes were wide open and rolled back.   
                                Karkat reported the news to Aradia. “He’s going slower. Should I celebrate or does that just fucking mean he’s going to stop moving forever?”    
                                “No, that is good.”   
                                “It doesn’t look good! He looks like he’s been bitten by some wild animal and all the blood isn’t helping!”   
                                “You should clean the cut on his hand as soon as he stops convulsing. ”   
                                “Goddamnit I will and stop knowing that happened!”   
                                “Don’t be so worried, Karkat. He’ll soon stop and you can fix him up! He’s lucky to have you there to take care of him. What if you weren’t there when he had this seizure?”   
                                Karkat muttered to himself, “If I wasn’t here he would have never had this seizure.”   
                Gamzee stopped convulsing and started breathing heavily. Karkat wiped his mouth with the edge of the towel. The moirail opened and closed his mouth and tried to say something.   
                                “It’s okay,” Karkat said, “Don’t fucking try to say anything, you don’t have to explain the miracle of epilepsy, just calm the fuck down while I…”   
                He looked over at Gamzee’s blood incrusted hand.   
                                “God fucking damn,” he said, “At least it stopped bleeding. Fucking tidal wave of blood in here.”   
                                He searched around the medical kit. He had seen it just a few minutes ago but it seemed like hours ago and he couldn’t find it and it seemed to take hours to find it. He got out the bandages before realizing he needed to take out the glass shards first. He took out the tweezers and grabbed Gamzee’s wrist before letting it go and saying,   
                                “Oh, Gamzee, I need to pluck out these glass shards, so don’t wave your hand around anytime soon.”   
                With a shaking hand, he managed to pick all the glass without horribly damaging his patient’s hand too much. He then scrubbed the hand with all the disinfecting wipes in the kit and wrapped it up tight in bandages. Gamzee’s eyes had returned to normal and he looked on with dull curiosity.   
                                “Huh,” he said, “The glass reflects all pretty the blood.”   
                                “Guh, no,” Karkat muttered, “Don’t talk about blood, there’s enough here as there is.”   
                He then remembered the cell phone. He went over and picked it up.   
                                “Aradia, you still there?”   
                                “Good,” she said, “you got over your fear of blood and cleaned his wound.”   
                                “What…I don’t even care anymore,” he replied, “I’m just about to pass out myself.”   
                                “I’ll come over there soon,” she said, and hung up.   
                God, thought Karkat, it’s creepy when a psychic tells you they’re coming over. It’s not just a plan, it’s a prophecy.   
                Karkat walked over and laid down in front of Gamzee.   
                                “You have my permission to call this one a miracle,” he said.   
         A few minutes later, Karkat couldn’t tell how long, the front door opened and slammed shut.  Gamzee jolted and for a second Karkat was afraid he was about to have a relapsed, but he calmed down again. Karkat could tell from the noise downstairs that it was his monstrous lusus back from an errand and not the quiet and polite Aradia. He wondered what would have happened if Crabdad had been there when Gamzee had his episode . No, he thought, that wouldn’t have been good. He probably would have cut the head off the troll menacing his charge and Karkat would have been too nervous himself to stop his lusus. He heard the crab creature click and shuffle up the stairs. Karkat yelled at the door for Crabdad to leave him alone, and Crabdad gave a hiss that said “You’re doing something naughty in there, but I’m not going to stop you.” Karkat felt guilty, like he really was self-pailing or something worse.   
                Gamzee was still a bit nervous, so Karkat gave up his dislike for personal touch and stroked his moirail’s shoulder.   
                                “There, there, you big lug,” he said, “It’s just Crabdad crabbing about. Your think pan is safe with me.”   
                Gamzee’s muscles loosened.   
                                “Aradia’s coming over soon to fix any messes I made,” Karkat added.   
                                “His matesprite,” Gamzee mumbled in reply, his shoulders stiffening a little.   
                Fuck, Karkat thought. Fucking jealousy. So entertaining in movies, so fucking painful in real life. Wasn’t that the way it always was?   
                                “But then she’ll leave, and we can watch any movie you want! Maybe I have something with clowns in it, or miracles, and it’ll be something with a happy ending.”   
                Gamzee melted into a puddle, but thankfully an alive and conscious one. Karkat removed his hand and looked at it.   
                                “Got to clean this up,” he said to himself, “Why did I use all the wipes?”   
                Karkat wrapped a bandage around h is hand without cleaning it. He could have gone to the hygieneblock to clean it but he didn’t want to leave Gamzee’s side.   
                So he laid by Gamzee’s side even longer. The room was cold from the air blowing in from the broken window, and Karkat was afraid it would make Gamzee sick but he was even more afraid to turn his back on the body. At least Gamzee ran warm. Karkat wore his long sleeve shirt even during warmer times while Gamzee didn’t mind running into the cold ocean naked. The temperature in the room was more uncomfortable for him than it was for his moirail.   
                Karkat wished and prayed for Aradia to come soon. He even tried sending his thoughts to her. Please come, he thought, you’re a miracle worker and I’m a miracle breaker. I can’t fix computers, how am I supposed to fix a troll? It wasn’t that he doubted she would come. She could, after all, see into the future and she knew she wou ld be here. He just wanted it to be soon than later. Things were awkward in here.   
                Karkat had so many questions for Gamzee, but he was afraid to ask them now when he was in such a state. Okay, to be honest, he was afraid to ask them at anytime. Finally, he decided it might help to talk to him just to keep the patient from falling asleep.   
                                “You okay?” he asked.   
                                “As okay as I can be, bro,” Gamzee answered.   
                                “Heh, that was a miracle back there? Maybe I should convert to your religion. We could wear matching makeup and dance around and do really crappy raps! Have a rap off! Ha, but no, I’m kidding you. Never could get into even orthodox religion. Fuck the gods, yeah! But not your gods. They’re cool with me, for now.”   
                  Karkat stopped babbling.   
                                “Did you mean what you said, about the hate and pailing and blood?” he asked.   
                                “Huh?” said Gamzee, “Sorry bro, but I don’t really remember what goes on during one of my turns.”   
                                “Yeah, that’s why they call it a turn, because you got turned inside out. Why did I expect you to remember anything after your brain pan’s been turned into an electric eel? You can’t remember things during the best of times!”   
                Gamzee didn’t say anything.   
                                “Yeah, electric eels are pretty cool,” Karkat said, “Don’t really know a lot about them. Don’t know what else is in the ocean. Big scary things and shit. Don ’t go near the ocean, lusii tell their charge, it’s dangerous! Though obviously seatroll lusii don’t say that, that would be really stupid.”   
                                Gamzee asked, “What did I say about blood?”   
                                “Fuck,” Karkat said, “Oh, yeah! You said there was a lot of blood around here, because you griefed with the window and lost.”   
                                “Oh,” Gamzee said, “I don’t remember that, but I know I don’t like reflections much.”   
                                “Yes, you told me about the little fairies haunting mirrors.”   
                                “Heh, not fairies, bro, just trolls.”   
A moment passed.   
                                Gamzee said, "I know what it was, my motherfucking best friend. I said something about your red blood.”   
                Karkat sat up.   
                                “What did you say about this so-called red blood?”   
                                “I don’t know, you were there and I wasn’t.”   
                Karkat calmed down.   
                                “But I do remember…” Gamzee said, “I remember one night when I was over at your hive. You were watching some movie and you started to cry. Not bawling or anything, just a little sniffle. That miracle water was red, but I couldn’t tell what shade.  I was looking and you saw I looking and you got all spooked.   
                                “But then you gave a look that said, ‘Oh wait, it’s just poor dumb Gamzee’, and you wiped your eyes like it wasn’t a motherfucking thing.”   
                                “It’s not a motherfucking thing,” Karkat said, “I just don’t want anyone to see me crying at the manipulative shit the movie industry excretes. You don’t have to tell everyone!”   
                                “Oh,” said Gamzee, “I thought colors meant something special. Like it meant you were like Aradia, except you…”   
                The door opened. It was Aradia.   
                                “We’re up here!” Karkat yelled at the door, “Crabdad, stand down!”   
                Aradia walked torturously slow up the stair to the room. She opened the door.   
                                “Took you long enough!” Karkat said as he got up.   
                                 “What are you talking about?” she said, “It just took me like forty-five minutes to get here! I was already in distance of the hive when I got your call!”   
                                “Oh, you were prepared. Sorry about that.”   
                She looked down at his hand.   
                                “You want me to dress your wound?”   
                                “No,” said Karkat, “Your patient is the guy lying on the floor in a pool of his own blood!”   
                                “It’s not really a pool. It’s more like a few drips.”   
                                “The room looks like a hurricane of blood came crashing through!”   
                                 “You’re being over-dramatic, Karkat.”   
                Karkat huffed. Aradia kneeled down beside Gamzee. She put her hand on his head.   
                                Gamzee said to her, “You just visit my bro Equius?”   
                                “Last night,” Aradia said nervously.   
                                “You smell like red sex.”   
                Karkat cringed.   
                                Gamzee lifted his head a little. “Whole room smells like red.”   
                Karkat did a 2x combo cringe.   
                                “He’s still a little out of it,” he said.   
                                “I figured as much,” Arad ia said, “Though I guess he was never much in it.”   
                                “Heh, is Equius in you?” Gamzee muttered.   
                Aradia ignored his comment and looked at the bandaged hand. She shook her head disapprovingly.   
                                “Did he really fuck up his hand badly?” Karkat asked, “Will you have to amputate it? In this room?”   
                                “You didn’t do a good job wrapping it.”   
                                “I used so many wipes I didn’t have enough for myself!”   
                                “You should unwrap the bandages and clean your wound.”   
                Karkat put his bandaged hand behind his back.   
                                 “When you get the chance,” she added.   
                Aradia took a kit out of her sylladex. She cut the bandages off with scissors.   
                                “Oh!” she said, “This isn’t so bad. Why would you think it needed to be amputated?”   
                Karkat looked at the hand and then looked away.   
                                “It only looks that good because I took care of it,” he said.   
                She cleaned it some more and then said,   
                                “He’ll need a few stitches.”   
                                “I’ll call Kanaya,” Karkat replied.   
                                “No, silly, not those stitches. He needs a suture. I think I can do that.”   
                                “You think!?”   
                                “Hold Gamzee’s other arm.”   
                Karkat walked over to Gamzee’s other side and held his arm.   
                                “Calm down and don’t have another seizure,” he told his moirail, “She’s a real pretend doctor, she can help you.”   
                Karkat looked away while Aradia did her work. Gamzee also looked away. Unfortunately, he also pressed his head against Karkat and whispered things to him.   
                                “She’s really pretty, isn’t she? Really fucking hot?” he whispered, “I see why my bro ended up with her.”   
                                “Shut up!” Karkat whispered, “Don’t expend any energy. Just concentrate on breathing and not on the pain.”   
                                “I think I like the pain. She’s good at bring the pain.”   
                                “Shut up!” he whispered again.   
                Karkat never thought he would ever feel this uncomfortable around a moirail. There was a silence as the clicking of medical tools stopped.   
                                “Um, Karkat, I finished some time ago? You can stop clenching your eyes closed?”   
                                “Gamzee still needs my help!” he shouted with his eyes closed.   
                                “Well, yes, he certainly does. But I think you should go get him some water.”   
                                “Oh fuck! I’ve been dehydrating him! Here he is almost passed out in shock and I’m not even giving him my piss to drink!”   
                                “Please don’t piss in his mouth. Or use a wallet.”   
                                “What sort of water should I get him? Mineral water? Seltzer water? Water from the Gates of Tannhauser?”   
                                “I think tap water is good enough.”   
                Karkat walked to the hygiene block to get a glass of water. He kept his eye on Gamzee, and it wasn’t because his moirail was injuried. He brought the glass over to Gamzee and put it to his lips before the troll took it from his hand.   
                                “I assume the tap water here is good,” she said, “At my hive I have to boil my well-water.”   
                               “And that’s good enough for you,” Gamzee said, spraying a little water.   
           Karkat gave him an angry look.  Aradia must have noticed the tension, because she then stood up.   
                                “I should probably leave now,” she said, “I think you have everything under control. You can call me if you need me. Don’t worry, I’ll probably know your calls coming.”   
                                “Goddamn, that’s creepy,” Karkat said.   
                                “I think it’s reassuring.” She looked over at the broken window. “You’ll need to put, like, a plastic bag over that. Hmmm, plastic.”   
                She walked to the door, and then she turned around.   
                                 “Bye, Karkat, and bye Gamzee,” she said.   
                                “Thanks, Aradia,” Karkat replied. Gamzee didn’t say anything.   
                When she was gone, Karkat sat next to Gamzee.   
                                “What was that about?” he growled, “Do you want me to auspictize between you guys? Because I am sure she doesn’t feel that way about you.”   
                                “And I don’t feel that way about her,” Gamzee replied.   
                                “Then stop the black flirting!”   
                                “I guess I’m too flirtatious. I say all these motherfucking things I don’t mean.”   
                Karkat sighed. He needed to address the behemoth in the room. This was the night to grief behemoths.   
                                Karkat asked Gamzee, “Do you hate me?”   
                                Gamzee answered, “Yes.”   



	9. Chapter 9

Gamzee’s response wasn’t as surprising as some unromantic primitive alien species might assume.  Scholars of romance have argued over what emotions a moirail should have towards their patron. While it was obvious that the patron was suppose to feel a strong pity with no distracting sexual feelings, no one could agree how the moirail was suppose to feel. Some said the moirail in a moirallegiance just stayed at the baseline emotion all trolls feel towards trolls that aren’t their enemy. Moirallegiance is a one way relationship. The patron confesses their pale love to their moirail and the moirail accepts it. This fits in with the way pale courting is carried out in troll society. If the moirail is the one to make the first move, they never admit it publically. Others say that despite the moirail’s socially enforced stoicism, they feel great pity towards their patron for taking on such a burden. Trolls with this opinion tend to be advocates of a mo re equalitarian reacharound-type moirallegiance. A third group, while not denying that some moirails feel pity for their patron, point out how close pity is to hate and how easily pity can turn to hate. Trolls hate gratitude; they wish to lob the favor back to the other person’s court as soon as possible. If they hate it when it’s just a matter of a few credits, it’s even worse when it involves admitting they’re so weak they need someone to control and take care of them. The moirail ends up hating their patron. This is often the case when the patron is much lower on the hemospectrum than the moirail, but the moirail is in such a dire situation they desperately need help.  Karkat and Gamzee’s relationship matches this to the T, and even advocates of the other theories admitted in those situations it’s perfectly normal for the moirail to hate even the kindest patron. Karkat, as an amateur scholar of romance, knew this already, so he reacted in the most mature mann er.

                                “You fucking hate me?!?” he yelled, “Me, after all I’ve done for you? After I’ve wiped up your shit – literally! – you turn around and say you hate me! You lousy ungrateful heartless psychotic waste-chute-fucking dumpass! I should have left you for dead!”   
                                “Like you would have left a highblood – THE MOTHERFUCKING HIGHBLOOD – for dead,” Gamzee replied in an odd calm.   
                                “Who the fuck would have cared? Your johns? They’d assume you just ODed or, MAYBE, that you had culled yourself for being such a waste of perfectly breathable OXYGEN!”   
                Gamzee sulked for a moment and then replied.   
                                “Still have motherfucking friends, and it doesn’t take mu ch for a lowblood to get themselves lynched.”   
                                 “So I’m a big fucking hero for taking you on! One false move and the seatrolls will drag me under kicking and screaming! I took a huge risk coming to your hive in the first place!”   
                                Gamzee stared into Karkat’s eyes.   
                                “It took you a solar sweep, a perigee, and two nights for you to come to my hive,” he said slowly.   
                                Karkat sputtered, “But I came, and for your information you’re counting my last visit BEFORE we BOTH started drifting apart as the time when I apparently stopped giving a shit about you!”   
                                “Did I motherfucking say you gave a shit about me?”   
                                 “Do I give a shit about you, he asks! I’ve been through hell these past few nights taking care of your shit!”   
                                “I was in hell getting raped by a demon so you wouldn’t get culled.”   
                Karkat’s jaw dropped.   
                                “You…you crazy motherfucker! You are the grudgiest motherfucker that ever held a grudge! Getting pissed off at me because of some fake fictional event! There wasn’t a demon dog, you weren’t getting raped, and your imperial fuckbuddy wasn’t going to blow me out of a cannon! None of it was real, you nookpanned idiot!”   
                Gamzee rubbed his bandages.   
                                “It was real enough for me, friend. I felt that wicked knot tear me up inside like it wasn’t just a dream.”   
                                “But it was a dream! How the hell am I supposed to fuck that idea into your brain pan like your johns fuck their genetic material into your gaping nook?”   
                                “I suffered pain for you, bro, and I ain’t just talking about the dream.”   
                                “Do you mean to tell me a musclebeast broke into your hive and raped you?”   
                                “Heh, that’s just about the only thing that hasn’t,” Gamzee chuckled, “Man, you were always such a literal square who can’t see all the invisible magic around us.”   
                                “And you see too much invisible shit.”   
                                “I wa s, you know, well, I guess the word is raped, and you didn’t come to face down my motherfucking demons.”   
                                “Sorry I didn’t use my non-existent psychic link to sense you were in danger and come on in riding my non-existent flying hoofbeast to save you. You never told me!”   
                                “Still didn’t save me, still suffered.”   
                                “You could have told me! You have a husktop! You have a phone! You could have used it if you weren’t so fucking high all the time, not like that stopped you from trolling me all the time!”   
                Gamzee said nothing.   
                                Karkat continued, “And if not me, if you hated me for some stupid reason like I said Faygo sucked, you could have told someone else! You could have troll Terezi! She always had a soft spot for you, and she believes there’s some sort of justice out there that isn’t the hemospectrum! She would have hung a rope around all their gilled necks!”   
                                “The blind justice chick?” Gamzee asked, “Don’t know what’s she’s up to now, but has she really graduated from toys to trolls?”   
                Karkat sighed.   
                                “You have a good point and I can’t even tell if you’re making a point,” he said, “Yes, she probably would have just gotten culled for her effort, and so would I, but you didn’t even give us the chance to get culled!”   
                                “Not gonna let a brother or sister get culled.”   
                                “See? It was your choice. You didn’t tell us. You kept the news from us.”   
                                “It was all bad news, and I didn’t want you to get your rage on cause you raging all the time.”   
                                “Well, congratulations on not pissing me off! You just let a little bad news turn into a mountain of behemoth droppings worth of bad news and then plonked it all me in one badly written email!”   
                                “Don’t even remember the email.”   
                                “You don’t remember anything but your grudges against your real friends!” Karkat looked over at the garbage bag labeled fuck no. “You’ve got a bureaus worth of rape cases – and every single person who ever touched you was raping you, I don’t care if no judge in the universe would ever convict – bu t all you remember is your best friend didn’t send you a 12 th perigee eve card and another friend is dating a guy you gave up on!”   
                                “Suffering,” Gamzee said slowly and deliberately, “Is motherfucking suffering. I suffered for a sweep to keep you happy. I suffered an eternity to keep you alive.”   
                                “It wasn’t real, and it wasn’t an eternity!”   
                                “I wish it wasn’t a dream,” Gamzee growled, “cause then when I decided to wake up, you’d be dead.”

Gamzee’s teeth were barred in a snarl.

                                   “You want me dead?” Karkat said standing up and pulling out his sickle, “Then grief me!”   
               Gamzee fell to his side.   
                                   “Stupid invalidism getting you out of your fights,” Karkat muttered as he put a towel pillow under his moirail’s head.         



	10. Chapter 10

Karkat got up and slowly walked sideways to the door. He opened it and when he saw Crabdad he put a finger to his lips.

                                “Be quiet!” he whispered, “And no, I wasn’t doing what you think I was doing.”

                He picked up all the bags and walked back into the room, slowly pulling the door behind me. He put the bags down and looked at the contents.

                                “He brought plastic wrap?” he said to himself, “Is he psychic or something?”

                He picked up the duct tape he had tossed out of his sylladex (duct tape was always useful) and fixed the window. He walked back to Gamzee and stroked his hair. The invalid’s forehead was hot. A thermometer he waved over Gamzee said his temperature was above normal. Guess he didn’t have to worry about the room being too cold after all. He put a cold compress on the fever-ridden patient’s head.

                                “Go to sleep, my sad clown,” he whispered to Gamzee, “I still love you.”

                He wondered if that was true. Despite pity being a part of redrom, respect was still a part of romance. It wouldn’t do the gene pool much good if total losers were considered hot. It didn’t matter as much in moirallegiance, but the patron did have to think there was some good in their moirail worth saving. When he and his friend were younger, before the drifting apart, he did admire Gamzee a little bit for being so content. Somehow he seemed with it. Turns out that was a lie and Gamzee was just as psycho as the rest of his friends. What was good about Gamzee? What will he be like when he’s completely reformed? Would he still be a candidate for culling? Perhaps the powers that be would spare him for his rare and very noble blood, but that wasn’t good enough for Karkat. He wanted a moirail who could pass the tests even if he was a peasant or at least a noble of more common blood. His ambitions to prove himself as a warrior were now overridden by his desire to become the greatest pale lover. He wanted Gamzee to be great, and himself to be the troll behind the troll. People would look at his moirail and say “My, why would he ever need a patron? Perhaps he is the patron, but his partner is so with it and totally not a midget with a short temper!” Makara would be known as The Highblood, and anyone who wanted to mess with Karkat would have to go through him. Not that Vantas the General couldn’t hold his own, of course. There would be a statue of them on the Imperial Mall! People would praise their names forever more!

                Unfortunately, Gamzee Makara was Gamzee Makara. He was lanky fool with the mind and body of a wriggler. He didn’t have psychic powers, wasn’t that good with his clubs, and probably couldn’t do archery. He had likely never been in a schoolfeeding booth in his entire life. What could he be except a jester? But he couldn’t even be good at that. He was terrible with words despite his love of poetry and couldn’t remember anything without a reminder pinned to his chest.  He couldn’t ride a unicycle or any other comic troll-powered vehicles. Guess he could dance. Maybe he could be a jester, but how would that bring him fame? Jesters were often sterilized so that their horrible genes wouldn’t pollute the troll species. They aren’t going to put up a statue of a sort-of-okay jester in even a communal excretion center. No one would proudly claim him as their ancestor. He would bring dishonor to anyone he was associated with.

                If he couldn’t be a decent jester, there was the job he had been doing for most of his adolescence. Of course, Karkat wasn’t going to let Gamzee do that. Maybe he should try and work on Gamzee’s jester skills. The goof could be rather clever when he was being shithive maggots. He also needed some serious time in the schoolfeeding booth, but that would have to wait until he wasn’t vomiting.

                Speaking of vomiting, Karkat got a liquids container and put it next to Gamzee. He also got him another glass of water and tried to pour it in the lying troll’s mouth. He only succeeded in getting Gamzee wet. Perhaps that was fine as well. Helps cool-down the fever patient.

                Karkat laid down on the floor and looked at the religious iconography around him. Perhaps that’s what he could respect about Gamzee. He had faith. The impious troll wasn’t thinking of religious faith. He would be totally happy if the Juggalo stopped being a Juggalo. He was thinking of Gamzee’s faith that everything was truly beautiful. Even thought the world was a craphole, he could still see miracles everywhere. As broken down as he was, there was still a spark of ambition left in him. His faith was a thing of beauty.

                Guess their moirallegiance had that going for it.

 


	11. Chapter 11

After putting away all of Crabdad’s purchases, Karkat ran right up to the respiteblock door, stopped, and opened it. Gamzee was still not dead. Karkat sighed in relief. He picked up his husktop and sat down next to the living troll. An alert told him he got an email from Aradia.

To: carcinoGenetist

From: apocalypseAverted  

Subject: h0w is gamzee

h0w is he right n0w? i cant really see much int0 the future s0 i assume things are g0ing well. 0r maybe gamzee will die s00n and thats why i havent seen m0re of him. i h0pe that isnt the case. 0_0

im glad it was just a little grand mal and he didnt g0 int0 a continuous seizure. i d0nt think we c0uld have dealt with that. the anti-c0nvalsant i gave y0u isnt supp0se to be used 0n tr0lls. g00d thing you didnt break his bones to deliver it. what was that ab0ut? if the seizure c0ntinued we might have had t0 g0 t0 the h0spital, even th0ugh im n0t sure if there are any.

i kn0w this is a delicate subject, but why did gamzee act that way ar0und me? d0es he have s0me black feelings f0r me? they pr0bably arent that genuine. i imagine he is in a very c0nfused state right n0w. he might be m0re sexually ar0used then he was bef0re.  s0p0r slime isnt actually very g00d f0r mating abilities th0ugh it l0wers inhibitions. if his feelings remain, i d0nt kn0w what we will d0.

please c0ntact me as s00n as you get the chance.

aa

                Ughh, Karkat thought, that’s the least reassuring email ever.  He was starting to doubt Aradia’s medical expertise. Still, he needed to troll her back.

carcinoGenetist (CG) began trolling apocalypseAverted (AA)

CG: I GOT YOUR EMAIL.

CG: YES, GAMZEE ISN’T DEAD BUT I DON’T KNOW HOW LONG THAT WILL LAST.

CG: HE HAS A FEVER AND HE HATES ME.

AA: that doesnt sound that bad

CG: WHAT, THE FEVER PART OR THE HATING ME PART?

AA: the fever part

AA: thats perfectly n0rmal

CG: BUT IT’S A FUCKING FEVER AND IT’S TWO DEGREES CENTOANDERS.

AA: still perfectly n0rmal f0r s0me0ne g0ing thr0ugh withdrawal

AA: tw0 degrees isnt that bad

AA: he might n0t actually even have a fever

CG: HE DOES HAVE A FEVER.

CG: HE’S LYING HERE SHIVERING AND SWEATING.

CG: WHY THE FUCK DO TROLLS SHIVER DURING FEVERS, THAT DOESN’T EVEN MAKE ANY SENSE.

AA: hmmm

AA: i was g0ing to say he might just have a high c0re temperature but n0 he d0es have a fever

CG: THANK YOU DOCTOR FOR CONCURRING WITH ME.

CG: YES HE HAS A FEVER AND IT’S A BAD ONE.

AA:  as i said thats n0t that high

AA: y0u sh0uld 0nly w0rry if it g0es up m0re by tw0 0r m0re degrees

CG: OH FUCK THAT’S NOT A LOT OF LEEWAY IS IT?

CG: JUST TWO LOUSY DEGREES AND HE’LL DIE ON ME.

AA: there is a large distance between grades 0n the anders system

CG: SO WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF HIS TEMPERATURE GOES UP TO THAT POINT?

CG: WILL HE JUST BOIL AWAY TO NOTHING LEAVING ME WITH A PAIR OF POLKA DOT PANTS?

AA: y0u think 0f the m0st silly c0nsequences karkat

AA: y0ull just have t0 use intraven0us hydrati0n

CG: OH GOOD, LET ME JUST GET MY INTRAVENOUS HYDRATION MACHINE.

CG: OOPS, I DON’T HAVE ONE.

AA: im not sure gamzee is just 0n s0p0r slime

AA: perhaps he d0es have hyp0dermic needles s0mewhere

CG: FUCK, DO I HAVE TO GIVE HIM MORE DRUGS?

CG: I AM NOT INJECTING ANYTHING INTO HIS BODY AFTER THE HOOFBEAST MEDS DEBACLE.

AA: im n0t saying y0u sh0uld inject any drugs

AA: and i h0pe y0u d0nt

AA: you w0uld just give him a saline drip

CG: DO YOU THINK I’M A FULL-LICENSED QUALIFIED MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL OR SOMETHING HERE?

AA: y0ure right

AA: y0u sh0uldnt attempt that

CG: SO WHAT SHOULD I DO WHEN THE EXCREMENT HITS THE AIR CIRCULATION BLADES?

AA: pray

CG: SURE, WHY FUCKING NOT?

CG: HERE’S ONE FOR THE MIRTHFUL MESSIAHS.

CG: YOUR DEAREST DEVOTEE IS ON HIS DEATH PILE.

CG: PLEASE BRING US SOME MIRACLES AND TWO DOZEN SHITTY HORNS.

AA: prayer w0uld at least calm y0u d0wn

CG: UNTIL GAMZEE DIED.

AA: that would be sad

AA: if he dies ill try and c0ntact his spirit s0 y0u can still talk

CG: I’M SURE HE’LL BE SO ENTHUSED TO TALK TO HIS MURDERER.

AA: y0u said he hated y0u

AA: why d0 y0u think that

CG: GODDAMNIT I WAS HOPING TO AVOID THIS TALK.

AA: y0u br0ught it up

CG: AND THEN I PROCEEDED TO IGNORE IT AND TALK ABOUT GAMZEE’S SICK FIRES.

AA: y0u need t0 talk ab0ut this s0metime

CG: I THINK GAMZEE HATES ME BECAUSE GAMZEE STRAIGHT UP TOLD ME HE HATES ME.

AA: was this while he was raging

CG: YES, AND AGAIN WHILE HE WAS CALM AND RECUMBENT JUST THINKING ABOUT ALL THE MIRACLES OF HATE AND BLOOD.

AA: is it blackr0m

CG: NO.

CG: MAYBE.

CG: I CAN’T FIGURE OUT THE GUY. ONE MINUTE HE’S BEGGING ME TO FUCK HIM, THE NEXT HE’S TELLING ME TO STAY AWAY.

CG: IT’S LIKE HIS LUST BLADDER IS IN A GAME OF KICKINGBALL.

AA: and he als0 has black feelings f0r me

CG: NO, HE ALSO TOLD ME STRAIGHT OUT HE ISN’T INTO YOU LIKE THAT.

CG: HE’S JUST BEING A CONFUSING JERK.

AA: so perhaps y0u sh0uldnt take what he says s0 pers0nally

CG: IT’S NOT LIKE HE DOESN’T HAVE REASONABLE REASONS TO HATE ME.

CG: ALONG WITH TOTALLY UNREASONABLE ONES.

CG: BECAUSE STARRED IN A CRAZY DREAM WHERE HE STABBED EQUIUS WITH A BONE BULGE I’M TO BLAME FOR EVERYTHING.

AA: equius?

CG: FUCK, WHY AM I SO STUPID TONIGHT?

CG: YES, HE HAD A DREAM WHERE HE ROCKED EQUIUS’ WORLD, BUT OF COURSE,

CG: THAT DOESN’T MEAN ANYTHING!!!

AA: hes interested in my equius?

CG: NO, I MEAN PARADOX JONES’S EQUIUS.

CG: YES, GAMZEE HAS ISSUES WITH EQUIUS ZAHHAK.

CG: HE HAS SOME SORT OF NOT CRUSH WITH YOUR MATESPRITE.

CG: HE IS BURNING WITH PASSIONATE INDIFFERENCE FOR HIS SORT-OF FRIEND EQUIUS ZAHHAK.

CG: BUT THEIR LOVE WAS DOOMED BECAUSE GAMZEE GOT HIGH AND FORGOT ABOUT IT ALL.

AA: i think gamzee needs s0me cl0sure

CG: YOU MEAN ACTUALLY TALKING WITH THAT GUY?

CG: I SUPPOSE I WOULDN’T BE ABLE TO GET OUT OF THAT MEETING.

AA: just think ab0ut it

CG: I’LL LISTEN TO YOUR ADVICE FOR NOW BUT LET ME WARN YOU.

CG: I’M GETTING PRETTY TIRED OF YOUR MEDDLING.

AA: im n0t meddling

AA: y0ure c0ming t0 me f0r advice

CG: I COME TO YOU FOR MEDICAL ADVICE,

CG: AND EVEN THAT’S BECOMING ANNOYING,

CG: NOT ADVICE ON HOW TO GET ALONG WITH MY OWN DAMN MOIRAIL.

AA: pale jeal0usy is the dumbest jeal0usy

CG: NO JEALOUSY IS DUMB.

CG: JEALOUSY IS WHAT PASSION IS MADE OF.

AA: passi0n is what passi0n is made 0f

AA: y0u sh0uldnt be afraid t0 ask f0r help

AA: this is a big j0b f0r 0ne tr0ll

CG: BUT I CHOSE IT, SO IT’S MY JOB.

AA: ill talk with y0u when y0u arent s0 stressed 0ut

CG: YES, LOOK INTO THE FUTURE TO SEE WHEN I’M NOT ANGRY.

CG: I DON’T THINK YOU’LL FIND ANY VISION OF THAT.

AA: karkat chill 0ut

 

apocalypseAverted (AA) ceased trolling carcinoGenetist (CG)


	12. Chapter 12

               Gamzee woke up, or at least he hoped he had woken up finally.  Everything seemed normal. This was his respiteblock. Everything was in its place. There was nothing scary expect for the huge crab monster looking at him.

                                “Ahhhhhhh,” Gamzee said, and was surprised to find his voice didn’t sound scared.

                The monster standing before him hissed and snapped its claws. Gamzee rolled incredibly slowly onto his back. It was incredible painful to move. Gamzee took a few deep breathes, coughed and gagged, and then rolled back to his side.

                                “Um, whoa, what’s up, bro’s dad? Good whatever it is,” Gamzee croaked out.

                The monster continued to stare at him. Gamzee shivered. He still felt feverish, but not passing out and being tormented by unholy spirits feverish.

                                “Hey, bro’s dad, we’re bros too? Fuck, you a dream beast? Going to fucking rip, rape me up with your claws?”

                Karkat burst out of the bathroom, zipping up his pants.

                                “CRABDAD!” he yelled, “Stop menacing the invalid! I’m not going to have my moirail have his heart burst open in here!”

                Crabdad put down his claws.

                                “Whooooa, this is some dream. Not that bad a one. Am I going to fuck you?” Gamzee coughed. “That’s fucked up, sleeping with my motherfucking friend moirail.”

                Karkat checked his zipper and then looked up.  

                                “How many times do I have to tell you? I’m not going to fuck you!”

                                “That’s the bitchtits, cause I’m totally bone…boned.”

                                “And this is not one of your shitty ass dreams! You’d think your freakish subconscious would set a dream in your own respiteblock instead of some lava dungeon?”

                                Gamzee replied, “Sometimes.”

                Gamzee spit up some bile onto the floor. Karkat rushed over and grabbed the liquid container.

                                “I put this here for a reason,” he said.  

                                “Huh, wow, I got things totally wrong.”

                                “You sure did.”

                Karkat looked away and lifted his eyebrows. He touched Gamzee’s shoulder.

                                “Still burning up,” he said, “Goddamnit. I thought your fever had broken. I wouldn’t have been such an asshole if I knew you were still sick.”

                He shook his head.

                                “Who am I kidding?” he said, “I still would be an asshole.”

                                “You’re a…” Gamzee couldn’t finish cheering Karkat up. He couldn’t remember what the next words should be.

                                “Don’t talk. There’s nothing you could say to that.”

                Karkat sighed heavily. Crabdad walked over and put his claw on his charge’s shoulder, but Karkat pushed it off.

                                “Crabdad, you can leave. Go to the door. We’ll probably gets some more guests soon.”

                Crabdad left in a huff.

                                Karkat told Gamzee, “While you were passed out, two more…fuck those douchebags, I’m not going to talk about them.”

                Gamzee wondered who they were. He actually felt a little touched that some of his “friends” still bothered to visit.

                                “Do you remember anything?” his patron asked.

                He did. Oh fuck, he did. He couldn’t remember what he did during his crazy-go-nuts thing but he’d been clued in afterwards. Even if he didn’t know, there was still the broken window and broken hand. And did he hit on Karkat again? Every time he saw that little midget he managed to fuck things up and flirt with him. There wasn’t anyone he wanted to have sex with less than him. He just hated him.

                                “Sorry…” Gamzee mumbled, “’bout the window.”

                                “You should apologize to yourself. It’s your window.”

                                “I’m also sorry…” Gamzee rolled onto his back, “I remember, you promised to watch a movie with me.”

                Karkat exhaled loudly.

                                “If you think you’re up to it,” he said, “I think I have a romcom with clowns in it.”

                He went onto his husktop and did some sort of thing with it.

                                “Okay, here’s the one I was thinking of. ‘Male troll after passing an examination to see if he’ll be spared instead of culled for mental instablity decides to become a doctor and also a clown and uses the power of laughter to keep the soon-to-be-culled from screaming…’ You want to watch that? We can watch it downstairs. This room has too many bad memories.”

                Karkat paused.

                                “Actually all your rooms probably have bad memories. Oh god, I don’t want to think about what you’ve done in your leisureblock.”

                                “Got a screen in my having-a-screen room,” Gamzee said, “We could go there and you could magic things up.”

                                “You can’t call everything magic. It’s called technology. Can you stand up?”

                Gamzee rolled himself onto his stomach, pulled his knees up, and then pushed himself up quickly. He stood with his arms raised as if he had done some sort of trick.

                                “Wow. Are you okay?” Karkat asked.

                                “I’m blind, but that’s okay.”

                After the grey fuzzies disappeared from his eyes, he looked over at his concerned patron.

                                “Nah, it’s just a thing that happens,” he told him, “Sometimes I go blind but it doesn’t last.”

                                “Oh, head rush. Sollux gets those all the time.”

                Karkat put his arm around the middle of Gamzee’s back. It was now Gamzee’s turn to tense up. How dare he touch me I’m so much better than him he just wants to fill you with his disgusting goo rise up and join us. He shook those thoughts out of his head and got dizzy in the process. He put his arm on Karkat’s shoulder and they walked out of the room.

                When they got outside, Karkat started to look around in confusion.

                                “Why does the first floor and the second floor make sense but the rest of your hive is split-up madness?” he asked.

                                “Huh? Don’t know. I never notice anything wrong with it.”

                                “Just tell where your screen room place is.”

                Gamzee took his arm off Karkat. He stumbled a bit and then pointed up a flight of twisted stairs.

                                “Fuck,” Karkat said, “It just had to be those stairs.”

                Gamzee gave Karkat a disappointed look. He really wanted to go up there, even if he couldn’t remember if that was the right place. He sure hoped it was. Those stairs looked dangerous. Karkat sighed. He helped Gamzee up the stairs. All Gamzee could think was die die die fall down the stairs. He didn’t know which one of them should die. He wished his thoughts could be more clear.

                The stairs ran for a long time until they got to a big room on the top. The door was open, and inside was a huge screen on the wall and on the floor there were several beanbag chairs.

                                “Hmm. Was right, I guess,” Gamzee said.

                                “You weren’t sure?”

                They entered the room. Karkat wiped a finger along the wall.

                                “Damnit, how long has it been since anyone’s been up here?” he asked.

                                “Think some people must have come up here. This place is pretty sweet. You could have an awesome party here.”

                Karkat cringed. Why the hell did that guy cringed so much?

                                “I’m not touching those beanbag chairs,” he said as he knelt down beside the technology box thingy.

                He took out his husktop and started messing around with the wires. Gamzee fell down into one of the chairs. His patron pulled at the wires and muttered and cursed to himself.

                                “Did you organize these in order of color?” he asked.

                                “Is that what you’re supposed to do?”

                Karkat grunted. Gamzee laid back in the chair and looked at the ceiling. It was a nice room. He had a lot of nice rooms in his hive. He had a great hive but out of all the places in his hive he just wanted to be in his recupercoon. This chair made him think of it more and more. It was even slime green.

                A sound emanated from all over the room. Light flashed from the big screen. He sat up quickly and yelled but then fell back again. He covered his ears and eyes. This room was really scary.

                                “It’s just the screen. I got it to work,” Karkat explained.

                After a little while, who knows how long, the familiar Imperial Alternian Studio theme started to play. Gamzee slowly rolled back up. Karkat was sitting crossed legged on the floor.

                                “This is a really great audio-visual system,” he said, “The  picture is crystal clear and it sound like there’s an entire orchestra crammed into this room. Why were you hiding this from us? You could have been marveling at this instead of your crappy ass husktop.”

                Gamzee tried to marvel but failed. It was just sound and images. That shit was everywhere. It was a miracle, but what wasn’t a miracle? Maybe less things should be miracles. Marveling could get really exhausting.

                The movie played. He couldn’t follow what was happening but that didn’t matter. He never could before. He’d ignore the plot and characters and just wait for any interesting moments. Sometimes the actor trolls would drive around real fast in vehicles, or they would start dancing, or they would throw things, or someone would fall down. That was cool. He liked slapstick humor the best, but sometimes he would watch regular type humor and laugh at the words people said. Sometimes when he laughed people would tell him that part wasn’t actually a joke or even that it was all serious and Gamzee looked like a psycho laughing his head off when he should be frowning it up. Gamzee thought if the movie fairies didn’t want him to laugh, they shouldn’t make things funny.

                He wasn’t laughing. Maybe it was because he was promised clowns, and he didn’t see no clowns? Which guy was supposed to become the clown anyway? During these boring bits, Karkat kept turning to Gamzee and looking at him like he expected him to say something, but Gamzee stayed quiet. He really didn’t care. A clown was coming. That was good enough for him.

                A clown came. It wasn’t good enough for him. He smiled a bit broader when the clown came on (Gamzee was almost always smiling), but it soon faded. It wasn’t that the clown wasn’t cool. He wasn’t just a clown but also a doctor clown and he stuck it to those snobby not-clown people. It just wasn’t amusing. He knew the doctor clown was busting out some sick jokes, but all he could think about was those poor crippled wrigglers. Fuck man, it didn’t matter what the doctor did. They were gonna die anyway. He remembered he once knew a wriggler like the wrigglers in this movie. Cute little kid. Name’s Trapper? Something like that? He was really great. He must be dead by now. Gamzee wanted to ask Karkat about it but somehow he just couldn’t.

                Then some chick got murdered. Gamzee was surprised, because he thought it wasn’t that type of movie. Now Gamzee said something, asking why everyone was dying, but Karkat shushed him and told him a big romantic scene was coming up. Apparently, that chick was some guy’s patron and her moirail was totally bummed out. He was walking through a garden and he was angry and Gamzee looked him and realized he was just the clown without his face. The clown looked up at the sky and shook his fist and called God an asshole. Only one god? Guess he wasn’t a juggalo. Then a flutterbeast flew in and the clown got all misty eyed.

                                “That’s not a miracle,” his patron said, getting all misty eyed himself, “Flutterbeasts are common. The miracle would be not finding one of those in a garden.”

                                “Naw man, it was a miracle,” Gamzee replied.

                Karkat turned to him with red tears in his eyes. He looked shocked. Gamzee put his hand to his face and found he wasn’t smiling.

                What a world. That grump was marveling at miracles and this miracle-loving motherfucker wasn’t.


	13. Chapter 13

The movie wasn’t over, but Karkat decided it might as well have been. He knew Gamzee wouldn’t even find the full dorsal nudity at the end funny. Besides, the sun had been up for hours and Karkat was incredible tired. He just wanted to sleep. His moirail probably needed sleep too. He was still sick.

                Karkat facepalmed to hide his tears.

                                “You just aren’t getting it, are you?” he asked.

                                Gamzee answered, “I really don’t get movies…man.”

                                “It’s not about you getting the plot. You aren’t laughing at anything. What’s the point of watching a comedy if you’re just going to sit there stone-faced?”

                                “You’re pretty fucking stone-faced yourself and you’re still sitting here.”

                                “I’m supposed to be stone faced! I don’t crack up at every little thing like you do!”

                                “WHAT. IS. THE. MOTHERFUCKING POINT,” Gamzee intoned, “if you can’t laugh.”

                Karkat scooted away.

                                Gamzee continued, “You say you love your comedies and you all like hey these are high art not musclebeast dongs or whatever, but you don’t. You just say you do.”

                                “Are you kidding me? Do you think I would spend so much time and energy trying to convince you ignorant people of their beauty if I thought they should all be burnt in a bonfire to end all bonfires?” 

                                “Then laugh. My motherfucker.”

                                “I can’t do it on command. That’s like sneezing on command.”

                Gamzee pointed to the screen.

                                Karkat explained, “Sometimes humor is cerebral. You don’t feel it in your diaphragm, you feel it in your brain. It’s all about witty plays on words, delightful incongruities and expertly crafted vomit jokes.”

                Gamzee continued to stare. Karkat looked down.

                                “Plus, there’s the classic definition of comedy. It’s all about that and not just the humor. Comedies always have happy endings.”

                Gamzee said something.

                                “Does this one have a happy ending?”

                                “Yeah, the clown becomes a doctor at last and he sticks it to those...”

                                “I thought he already was a doctor.”

                                “Well, now he’s an OFFICIAL doctor instead of just some guy running around in a doctor’s coat spraying people with unflavored carbonated water.”

                The action continued on the screen.

                                Gamzee answered, “I thought it would end when everybody dies.”

                                “It’s just that one character who dies. No one else dies.”

                                “I must have missed the part where they all got immortal.”

                Karkat turned off the movie and unplugged his husktop from the audio visual system. The two left the room. Gamzee didn’t need help going down stairs, but he was still feverish. They went back to his respiteblock. Karkat laid Gamzee in a pile of towels and put the blue cuffs around his wrists. He didn’t put Gamzee’s arms behind his back. He thought Gamzee would be more comfortable that way. He then thought of his own comfort.

                                “I’ll take your recupercoon today,” he said, “If you don’t mind.”

                                “I still got that thing? I thought you threw it away.”

                                “I’m not going to throw something like that away! I think that’s illegal.”

                                Gamzee groaned, “Take me with you.”

                                “Huh?”

                                “Put me in when you go in.”

                                “I can’t give you any sopor slime, not even on your skin! You’re in detox! That means no more toxins!”

                                “You’re doing toxins.”

                                “That’s because I was smart enough to never ever eat that disgusting stuff!”

                Karkat stomped off and went to the insanely large closet (why did he have a closet half the size of his respiteblock with NOTHING IN IT?) where he had pushed that stupid recupercoon.

                It was not entirely true that he’d never ingested sopor slime. Like many young wrigglers, he had taken an experimental taste when his lusus wasn’t looking. Like many young wrigglers he never did it again. Even among druggies sopor slime wasn’t very popular. It was seen as incredible disgusting. The substance tasted horrible and people soaked themselves in it for Mother Grub’s sake! It was filled with sweat, dirt, and dried skin cells. It was like ablution waste spiked with antifreeze.

                Gamzee’s recupercoon was overflowing from lack of use. Recupercoons naturally refilled themselves. They took moisture from the air and excreted the narcotic into the basin. After a while, they needed to be emptied. Every hive had a vacuum somewhere for this chore. Karkat would have to find where it was in this house. Right now he didn’t fucking care. He just stripped off his clothes and jumped right in.

                It felt a bit weird being in someone else’s recupercoon. It just wasn’t hygienic. Well, Gamzee probably hadn’t actually slept in it for seasons and just used it as storage. Still, it didn’t seem right. Perhaps Gamzee had a point about it being unfair. He was out there in sleeping on the floor with his think pan sloshing with daymares while his patron was here in this warm, soothing…Karkat fell asleep.

                He woke up to a warm ticklish feeling on his neck. He opened his eyes and stared right into Gamzee’s blank ones.

                                “JT!” Karkat chirped.

                He moved to the back of the recupercoon, but the thing was still small. Gamzee just stuck his head farther in. His long tongue continued to lick Karkat’s bare skin.

                                “Gamzee,” Karkat whined, “Gamzee, you can’t do this, we can’t have sex, I’ve told you this before!”

                Gamzee lifted his head up a little.

                                “I would never touch you,” he said, and started licking again, “You’re filth. Dirt. A peasantblood.  A motherfucking mutant.” Each line was punctuated by a lick.

                                “What the fuck…” Karkat muttered.

                Gamzee started getting more aggressive in his hunt for sopor slime and began chewing on Karkat. This woke Karkat up enough for him to shove the addict’s face. It didn’t work. Gamzee was still coming strong. Karkat pushed harder and he pressed his claws into Gamzee’s face until blood dripped down his hands but Gamzee didn’t take note of the pain. He just moved his tongue up to Karkat’s hands and licked them.

                                “Ahh, ugh, you creepy violent bastard! When did you get so strong?” Karkat yelled as he continued to push.

                                Gamzee answered, “I was always strong, you sad ass motherfucker. I’m no peasantblood, I could always beat…”

                He stopped and took his head out of the recupercoon to look at nothing. He stepped back and fell out of view. Karkat stuck his head out the recupercoon. Gamzee was on his knees looking at his cuffs.

                                “That strong ass dude,” he said, “I could have…these are his cuffs.”

                Gamzee pulled at them.

                                “Strong ass dude,” he chuckled.

                Karkat leapt out of the recupercoon naked and dripping with slime.

                                “Fuck Gamzee, now you’re high again!”

                Gamzee didn’t look up at the naked troll.

                                “I wish,” he said, “I’m still sober as a motherfucking kite. Takes a while to get high. But that sweet taste…”

                Gamzee looked at the sopor slime on the floor and dove down to lick it.

                                “No you gross moron! No more licking tonight, or, or any night!” Karkat yelled.

                He tried to pull Gamzee away from the floor but failed again to overcome the highblood’s strength. 

                                Gamzee moaned, “Stop it, just stop it, bro. It’s the only miracle I got left.”

                                “It’s not a miracle, it’s a goddamn disease!”

                Gamzee stopped of his own accord.

                                “Guess I’m gonna get culled,” he said.

                Karkat turned around and yelled out the open door.

                                “Crabdad! Crabdad you shuffling crackbeast, get in here!”

                Gamzee shuddered at the sound of Crabdad hissing and snapping his way up the stairs. It was much louder to the sensitive troll. Karkat wanted to put a comforting hand of Gamzee, but his hand was covered in that stupid poison.

                Crabdad knocked down the respiteblock door. He ran to the closet and almost fell over the two. Gamzee seized up when the monstrous lusus came in.

                                Karkat said to his lusus, “Crabdad, don’t kill him and bring me some water with…fuck it, I’ll do it myself.”

                The lusus looked down at Karkat’s naked body and hissed him out.

                                “Yes I know I’m naked and dirty, I’ll fix that! Just guard him and keep him away from the sopor slime!”

                Karkat ducked under Crabdad, grabbed his clothes, and ran out. Halfway to the thermal hull he decided he should have stayed with his moirail, but it was too late now. He poured a whole lot of salt into a glass of water and stirred furiously. He hoped there was enough salt since Gamzee was close being a sea troll and could take more salt than land trolls. He ran back up to the closet.

                                “Gamzee!” he yelled, “Get your ass over to the hygiene…to the bathroom!”

                Gamzee stood up without problem and stumbled over to the bathroom door. Karkat opened it for him. He shoved the glass into Gamzee’s hand.

                                “What is this?” he mumbled.

                                “Just drink it!”

                Gamzee chugged it down without gagging. Again Karkat was afraid it wouldn’t take, but Gamzee moved over to the load gapper and started vomiting.

                                “Oh yeah,” he said between bouts, “This is awesome. This is the bitchtits.”

                                “Are you getting off on this?”

                                “Does Equius get off on this?” he said between another burst, “I motherfucking…”

                He finished vomiting any trace of the sopor slime and fell over.

                                “I hope he does.  Only way I could make that bro happy,” he said before closing his eyes.

                Karkat rinsed the dirty glass and filled it with tap water.

                                “Drink this,” he said.

                Gamzee sat up and did so before falling over again.

                                “You need to get over Equius right now!” Karkat ordered, “Or when you aren’t passed out.”

                Karkat almost passed out himself. Instead he sat down and watched his moirail.

                                “When you wake up I’m going to troll that freak.”

                He looked out at the window. The light-sensitive glass was blocking out the sun letting in only one beam where the broken panel was.

                                “Or when it actually turns to night,” he added.

                Karkat gave a sigh to end all sighs.


	14. Chapter 14

Gamzee and Karkat were ready to talk with Equius. Gamzee was still sick but this task revitalized him. He had taken care of himself. He had taken a bath (“Don’t use soap in your hair!”), he gotten dressed in his favorite pants (“How do you tell the difference?”), and he had even put on the old face (“I’m not sure that’s how you used to do it.”). He found his husktop. Now with his patron he was sitting on some cushions in his leisureblock with his husktop in front of him. He was logged into Trollian. He was going to talk with his former something.

  


terminalCapricious (TC) began trolling centaursTesticles (CT)

 

TC: hEy My BlUeBlOoD bRoThEr, I gOt SoMeThInG iMpOrTaNt To TeLl YoU.

CT: D --> Is this Gamzee Makara?

TC: HoLy FuCk HoW dId YoU rEmEmBeR mY nAmE? i CaN't EvEn ReMeMbEr YoUr LaSt NaMe!

CT: D --> Zahhak and I do not pollute myself with to%ins like you do

TC: i'M tRyInG tO sToP, mAn, I rEaLlY aM.

CT: D --> You have told me that before but your e%alted plans never come to fruition

TC: tHiS tImE iS dIfFeReNt, I hAvE hElP.

CT: D --> I doubt there is anyone who could help you

CT: D --> Only someone of higher b100d than you could dare rein you in

CT: D --> There is no one above you but degenerate seatrolls

CT: D --> Your e%quisite b100d, your only good point, shall be your downfall

TC: wHy Do YoU hAvE tO bE lIkE tHaT?

TC: hErE i Am CoMiNg BaCk To YoU aFtEr A wHoLe FuCkInG sWeEp TrYiNg To StArT tHiNgS uP aGaIn AnD yOu HaVe To Be LiKe ThIs.

TC: i Am TrYiNg To InGnItE A bEaUtFiUl FiRe ToGeThEr AnD yOu HaVe To DoUsE tHaT mOtHeRfUcKeR oUt AnD pOuT eVeRyWhErE.

CT: D --> From what I’ve heard you’ve been starting your sick fires with everyone

TC: wWhOoOoOa NoT eVeRyOnE, tHaT wOuLd Be ReAlLy HaRd To Do.

TC: i ThInK i CaN cOuNt AlL oF tHeM oN tWo HaNdS. wElL, mAyBe I wOuLd NeEd To TaKe OfF mY sHoEs.

CT: D --> More than two is far too many!

CT: D --> You abandoned all your decent companions to frolic with your e%tremely 100d friends

TC: yOu JeLoUs?

CT: D --> As a concerned friend I am

TC: hAhAhAhA, yOu ThInK yOu WeRe OnE oF mY dEcEnT cOmPaNiOnS.

TC: i KnEw YoU wErE dOiNg InDeCeNt ThInGs EvErYtImE tHiS hOt MoThErFuCkEr TrOlLeD yOu Up.

CT: D --> Indecent?

TC: tHe MiNuTe ThE mAgIc ChIrP sOuNdEd YoUr ShOrTs WeRe On ThE fLoOr AnD yOu WeRe PuLlInG yOuR bOnE bUlGe LiKe It WaS sOmE mOtHeRfUcKiNg SaLtWaTeR tAfFy!

CT: D --> I did no such thing!

TC: oH yEaH wHaT tHe FuCk WaS i ThInKiNg?

TC: yOu HaD yOuR mOtHeRfUcKiNg FiSt PuNcHiNg ThE sHiT oUt Of YoUr ShIt BoX!

TC: honk HONK :0) 

CT: D --> Why are you doing this?

TC: i'M dOiNg ThIs for you,

TC: MY MOTHERfUcKING BEST FRIEND.

CT: D --> Pardon me, highb100d, but I do not understand

TC: i would do aNyThInG to make you smile.

TC: THAT’S HOW I FELT AS A DuMbAsS WRIGGLER.

TC: i would do all the filthy shit i know you keep all locked up inside you.

TC: I WOULD MAKE YOU FEEL PAIN.

TC: i would humiliate, degrade, and all dirtyify you until you’re half-dead.

TC: AND THEN I WOULD MAKE YOU ALL DEAD.

TC: i’m gonna take one of those piece of shit bows of your and give it to you.

TC: GIVE YOU IT WRAPPED AROUND YOUR THICK NECK.

TC: honk HONK hOnK hOnk

CT: D --> Sir, not that I don’t

CT: D --> Appreciate

CT: D --> Your lovely slam poetry, but I already have

CT: D --> A stable kismesistude.

TC: i KnOw i KnOw i mOtHeRfuCkIng kNoW but

TC: I WANT TO BE YOUR EVERYTHING, RED OR BLACK.

CT: D --> That is ridiculous beyond all mea%ure.

CT: D --> You cannot be two people.

TC: me and i are gonna be two mirthful messiahs.

TC: AND WE’LL GANG UP ON ARADIA AND THAT LUPE GUY.

CT: D --> I will kill you if you

TC: NO, DON’T!

CT: D --> Dare do such an unspeakable thing.

CT: D --> Oh shoot, didn’t type fast enough.

TC: GAMZEE IS JUST GOING CRAZY NOW, IGNORE HIM.

CT: D --> Is this someone else, or is Gamzee going even more eccentric than I thought?

TC: IT’S ME, KARKAT VANTAS. 

CT: D --> Using another’s caste color is very unacceptable!

CT: D --> You should use your grey or your

CT: D --> chartreuse? 

TC: WELL I’M TOO BUSY COMFORTING GAMZEE TO PUT ON WHATEVER UGLY COLOR CHARTREUSE IS SUPPOSE TO BE.

CT: What is this SHIT abooout yooou black flirting with MY kismesis?

TC: AND NOW TWO PEOPLE ARE USING THE WRONG COLOR!

TC: OH THE SCANDAL!

TC: WHOOO THE FUCK ARE YOU?

CT: I’m the fuck LUPINE DURAND, Equius’ black looover!

TC: KARKAT VANTAS, GAMZEE’S MOIRAIL.

CT: Car cat? Urghhh.

CT: What cooolooor is yooour bloood?

TC: NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS.

CT: Wait, my BOOOYFRIEND just tooold me yooou have cartruce bloood.

TC: IT’S CHARTREUSE. OR WHATEVER.

CT: Enooough ooof this carade!

CT: Time fooor me tooo talk as yooour superiooor.

CT: Trooollian, change accooounts tooo threewolfMoon!

CT: I cooommand yooou!

CT: Trooollian?

TC: ARE YOU REALLY THIS STUPID OR ARE YOU LEADING ME INTO A FALSE SENSE OF SECURITY?

CT: Shut up, foool, Equius is assisting me nooow.

CT: Looog oooff, looowbloood.

  


centaursTesticles (CT) logged off

 

terminallyCapricious (TC) logged off

 

carcinoGeneticist (CG) logged on

 

threewolfMoon (TM) began trolling carcinoGeneticist (CG)

 

TM: Are yooou still there, looowbloood, ooor have yooou abscooonded? 

CG: YES, I’M STILL HERE.

CG: I’M NOT SCARED OF TECHNOLOGY, UNLIKE SOME PEOPLE.

TM: Yooou shooould be scared ooof me!

TM: Yooou have insulted me with yooour flagrant black flirting!

CG: THAT WAS GAMZEE, YOU COLORBLIND BIGOT.

TM: Yooou are respooonsible fooor him!

CG: I KNOW THAT, AND I’M REALLY FUCKING SORRY I LET HIM GO ECCENTRIC ON YOUR BOYFRIEND.

TM: The apooolooogy ooof a looowbloood is wooorthless!

CG: GAMZEE FEELS BAD TOO.

CG: THERE, ARE YOU HAPPY?

TM: Nooo.

TM: I ooonly take apooolooogies troooll tooo troooll.

TM: And I take them in bloood! Awooo!

CG: FUCK, THIS IS GOING TO TURN INTO SOME SORT OF STUPID DUEL ISN’T IT?

CG: MY MOIRAIL IS SICKER THAN EQUIUS’ PORN FILES. 

CG: IT CAN’T BE HONORABLY BEATING THE CRAP OUT OF A GUY WHO CAN’T STOP CRAPPING.

TM: He shooould have thooought ooof that befooore he insulted us.

TM: Where are yooou looocated?

CG: I’M NOT GOING TO TELL YOU WHERE WE ARE IF YOU’RE COMING OVER TO KILL US, HAIRBALL!

CG: YOU CAN HUNT US BY YOUR OWN FUCKING SELF.

TM: Never mind, my BOOOYFRIEND tooold me where yooour degenerate hive is.

CG: WHAT’S WITH YOU GOING TO EQUIUS FOR EVERYTHING?

CG: ARE YOU GUYS SITTING IN EACH OTHER’S LAPS?

CG: OH DEAR GOD OF VIRGIN EYES, DID I INTERRUPT SOMETHING BETWEEN YOU TWO LOVERS?

TM: Nooo, I never pail this FUCKING early in the evening.

CG: YOU SLEEP WITH YOUR KISMESIS?

CG: DO YOU SHARE A HIVE LIKE SOME SORT OF PALE COUPLE BUT WITH LESS HUGS AND MORE EYE-GOUGING?

TM: FUCK oooff! Whooo are yooou to cast shadooows ooon ooour looove?

TM: Yooour ooown relatiooonship is tooo sooorid.

TM: This Gamzee persooon is a highbloood and yooou have that looower colooor bloood.

TM: Equius tells me it’s sooome sooort ooof green yellooow SHIT.

TM: What is with yooou musus-blooods sinking yooour claws intooo blue blooods?

CG: I’M NOT SINKING MY CLAWS INTO HIM, IT’S A FREE AND LOVING RELATIONSHIP.

CG: AND HE’S MORE LIKE A PURPLE BLOOD.

TM: WHAT?

TM: Oooh FUCK, yooou’re right!

CG: AND I WAS RIGHT ABOUT YOU BEING A COLORBLIND BIGOT!

TM: I’m nooot saying I’m scared to fight sooome salt-chugging ASSHOOOLE.

TM: But it really was an insult against hooorse boooy here.

TM: Why the FUCK shooould I care?

CG: GOD, YES, YOU GUYS HAVE SOME WEIRD DIAGONAL THING GOING ON HERE.

TM: Shut up, VIRGIN.

TM: This doooesn’t mean yooou wooon’t be culled.

CG: LET’S JUST LET GAMZEE AND EQUIUS TALK IT OVER IN A NON-DUEL WAY.

TM: I will allooow it.

CG: IT’S NOT EVEN UP TO YOU! JUST LOG OFF!

carcinoGeneticist (CG) ceased trolling threewolfMoon (TM)

 

carcinoGeneticist (CG) logged off

 

terminallyCapricious (TC) logged on

 

terminallyCapricious (TC) began trolling centaursTesticles (CT)

 

TC: i'M rEaLlY rEaLlY sOrRy AbOuT tHaT, bRo.

CT: D --> I am more confused than angry

CT: D --> If you don’t mind me asking, what was the point of this e%ercise?

CT: D --> Did Vantas command you to confess your wa%en feelings to me?

TC: nAw, WeLl, I wAsN't ExAcTlY cOnFeSsInG tO yOu.

TC: i WaS jUsT lOoKiNg To Do A fEeLiNg JaM, gEt SoMe ClOsUrE, cAuSe I tHoUgHt YoU mIgHt FeEl SoMeThInG fOr Me.

TC: lIkE, yOu MiGhT hAvE fElT sOmEtHiNg FoR mE?

CT: D --> Since you ask, I suppose I must confess how I felt when we were younger

CT: D --> I did have feelings for you

CT: D --> And yes, they were feelings of the concupiscent sort

CT: D --> Your b100d was irresistible to me

CT: D --> I didn’t know anyone with higher b100d then me when we were first introduced

CT: D --> I did not even know of the sea trolls

CT: D --> I want to submit myself to anyone I could call my superior

CT: D --> So you can see why I ended up having the most

CT: D --> Proper thoughts about you

TC: sO iF i HaD wEnT HeY bRo YoU gOt To JuMp Me, I oRdEr It, yOu WoUlD hAvE?

CT: D --> And I might never have met my sourspade Lupine Durand

TC: i GuEsS tHaT wOuLd HaVe ReAlLy SuCkEd, FoR yOu AnD hIm.

CT: D --> I apologize for leading you on, sir

TC: iT's CoOl, I cOuLd HaVe AsKeD aT sOmE pOiNt If I rEaLlY wAnTeD tO.

TC: sOrRy I wOkE yOu Up AnD sTaRtEd FlIrTiNg LiKe An EcCeNtRiC mOtHeRfUcKeR iNsTeAd Of JuSt TeLlInG yOu AlL tHiS.

CT: D --> I am normally awake and productive at this hour

CT: D --> But I accept your apology

CT: D --> Give my e%tremely begrudging regards to your surprisingly acceptable patron

CT: D --> I hope one night he’ll help you develop more than one good attribute

CT: D --> Good evening, highb100d

centaursTesticles (CT) ceased trolling terminallyCapricious (TC)

Gamzee shut the husktop and looked off into space. Karkat looked at him expectantly.

                                He finally asked, “How do you feel?”

                Gamzee turned and grinned.

                                “Motherfucking awesome!” he said, “Wow, I forgot what a huge asshole that horsefucker is!”

                                “You don’t feel waxen for him at all, do you?”

                                “Naw, he’s a boring ass motherfucker. What the hell do we have to talk about? It would be all ‘hey man, these robots are shit!’ and he’d be ‘my robot are superior’ and I’d be ‘actually I like robots I was just flirting’ and he’d go ‘do you like the X123 model or the X456 model?’ and I wouldn’t have anything to say!”

                                “I am so fucking glad you aren’t going to pursue anything with him. It totally wouldn’t work out. Durand is a better match for him. He’s dominate as a raging musclebeast and not just when he’s going through a psychotic episode. He’s just high enough to fulfill Equius’ blood fetish but not so high Equius would let him chock him to death. Plus, I could practically feel his bulging muscles over Trollian.  He’s probably not a skinny guy like you.”

                Gamzee didn’t say anything.

                                “Oh fuck,” Karkat said, “Here I am talking about how much you suck right in front of you! Goddamn Karkat, use some tact for once in your goddamn life.”

                                Gamzee said something. “There’ve been times when I lost it, and when I came to, people would say I’d given them the best black sex in their life,” he intoned.

                                “Goddamnit, are you still hoping to rock his world?”

                                “I think back then,” Gamzee started, “Even back then I didn’t want to jump him. I don’t think I even knew about any of that stuff before I got my face shoved down a crotch. I just wanted to make him smile.”

                                “Well, he’s probably smiling now as he does unspeakable things that you’d never do.”

                                “Guess miracles do come true.”

                Gamzee held hands with Karkat and Karkat let him.

                                “You know,” Gamzee said, “I might have killed someone during one of my turns.”


	15. Chapter 15

“What?” Karkat screamed, “You killed someone during a whiteout! Who the fuck was nooksucker!”

                                “I don’t really know,” Gamzee said with a shrug.

                                “You should be conscious when you kill a troll! It’s very important!”

                                “I guess it was a lowblood. Or a seatroll.”

                                “God! Maybe you shouldn’t kill trolls at all! You might have murdered someone!”

                                Gamzee pondered this. “Not sure it was motherfucking murder. Maybe it was suicide. Ninjas can get really freaky sometimes and get it in there thinkpans that it’d be so fucking hot if the highblood culled them. Horse boy can’t be the only kinky one on this crazy ass planet.”

                                Karkat gagged. “Okay, so maybe it was more like…that. It’s a good thing that you’re culling trolls that are wired so badly they think black sex involves real death. Our species is already hurdling torward that direction. But wouldn’t their moirails and cohorts take revenge?”

                Karkat grasped Gamzee’s shaking hands.

                                He said, “If anyone kills you during sex, I will fucking kill them, I swear. That goes for killing you not during sex, of course.”

                                “Thanks, bro, though I’m not sure if you should go through the trouble.”

                                “Fuck, of course it’s trouble, but it’s not like you aren’t already a big bag of trouble. I knew the job was dangerous when I took it.”

                                Gamzee continued, “Yeah, I think it was a lowblood. Like really lowblood. I don’t know, as high as I am, hehe, I just assume all land trolls are peasantbloods.”

                Karkat was alarmed at this.

                                “Fuck,” the indigo-blood said, “Why’d the hell I say that? Sometimes I just go into these racist moods, which is goofy as fuck since I can’t even tell the difference between a green blood and a yellow blood,”

                                “Now, take those seabloods, that’s a weird story. They do treat me like I’m a higher than them. Well, not exactly, they still treat me low, but they act like I should be above them.”

                                Karkat explained, “That’s normal with rare bloods. Kanaya gets treated like a princess even though she’s only a midblood. She has jade blood, by the way. She’s the one with all the colorful clothes.”

                                “Oh yeah, her, she was a real miracle,” Gamzee said, “But yeah, I think my ancestor did a whole lot of crazy fucked up shit. This one seatroll said his ancestor was subjuggulated by me and he was taking his revenge by pailing with me. The weird thing was he was a total bottom. Made my peaceful self rage at him.”

                Karkat thought it was weird that Gamzee didn’t seem to believe he could be a violent asshole. Memory loss and wishful thinking was to blame. He himself couldn’t believe that people submitted themselves to the pitiful wriggler. The romance expert was rather naïve.

                                As if he could read his friend’s thoughts, Gamzee mused, “I think people like getting all submissive with me because at the end of the night they know I’m the sad submissive one,”

                                “And I’m just really pumped to do anything to make people happy.”

                Karkat put up his fist.

                                “You can’t be all things to all people, Gamzee! Especially to douchebags who won’t return the favor!”

                                “I gotta be something to someone.”

                                 “You are someone to me and I care. I I care more than anyone else!” Karkat huffed, “Fuck, speaking of someones, would you just tell me who the fuck you kill?”

                                “Told ya I don’t know.” Gamzee cringed. “I don’t really wanna talk about this now. I’m scared shitless to let all those memories come out and I’ve already done enough closure shit for the night.”

                                “So what do you want to do now?”

                                “Eat a million slimeless pies!”

                And he did. Karkat must have heated up a million grub pockets and Gamzee just washed them all down with a big ass glass of moobeast milk. Karkat’s appetite wasn’t as great. He was too grossed out by Gamzee’s poor table manners. The near-orphan was such a messy eater.

                                “Was your appetite always this big?” Karkat asked, “I can’t remember if it was. I just knew you were always so skinny.”

                                “Naw,” Gamzee said, spitting out a piece of pie onto Karkat’s cheek, “The slime burned wicked holes in my stomach, and the food fell down those holes before it could reach my body and get me fat.”

                                “Hmm…”

                                “Oh my fucking clown,” he moaned as he put some more bitter grubsauce on a Propriestress fruit pie, “It’s so motherfucking awesome to finally eat without my food sack throwing up a fight!”

                                Karkat gulped. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that with the way you’re packing it in. Anyway, aren’t you suppose to be sick?”

                                “I feel mad dizzy and my bones are still out of whack, but I think I can handle it. Fuck, even if I do, I’ll get to taste this shit again on the way up!”

                Karkat shuddered. He stood up.

                                “I think I’ll just leave you with your prepackaged feast,” he said.

                Gamzee smeared lips wobbled but he soon cheered up.

                                “Okay, bro, but just remember to buy up some more orange juice!”

                Karkat walked out of the consumptionblock. He couldn’t quite escape Gamzee’s pleased moans that showed just why the boy was so popular. He went to one of the many empty rooms in the labyrinthine hive and settled down with his husktop. To keep his mind off Gamzee for a while, he checked out his favorite celebrity sites for news about troll Jennifer Aniston (oh when would the poor girl ever catch a break?). This just reminder him of her seatroll nemesis and that reminded him of all those scum-sucking seatrolls who raped poor six sweep Gamzee. Who was their ringleader, and how much did she resemble troll Angelina Jolie?

                As he pondered whether he should try and contact Feferi, another friend of a friend popped in. Aradia had come up with an ingenious solution to Gamzee’s sleeping problem. She had cobbled together a soporific transdermal patch. This way the addict could sleep with only a minimal dose of sopor slime and not be tempted to use the substance inappropriately. It wasn’t a perfect solution.  She had tested it on herself and not only did she still suffer from a few mild diurnal delusions, she also got a tiny rash. The patient would need to be monitored closely. Still, this was good news. Now they wouldn’t have to chose between him suffering from sleeplessness or suffering from daymares.

                Karkat was going to find his moirail to tell him the good news when he heard him wobbling into the walls and calling his name. Karkat gave him a break and ducked his head out the door to call him back.

                So Gamzee stumbled into the room.

                                “Oh fucking miracle I found you!”

                                “Errghhh…it’s not a fucking miracle. Your hive isn’t that big,” Karkat replied.

                The clown put a hand on his head and flopped down on a pile of harlequin pillows.

                                “I’m just thinking of the dream I had yesterday…the one I had before I licked you. It’s still creeping me out. Hey, you like dreams, right?”

                                “In an abstract sense, yes.”

                                “Well, in this one, it’s kinda weird, but I was on a beach, a normal one without any sea of blood or shit, and I wanted to go see the old goat, so I went and wading into the water, but I just couldn’t get to him. The water wouldn’t get deep. I was just always in the shallow, always only a few fucking feet from the beach. Isn’t that odd or something?”

                The young amateur psychologist pondered this.

                                “It’s not like all dreams are dreams of blood. Those stupid, silly little bloodless delusions can be the fucking worse.” Karkat pulled back. “Or so some experts say,”

                                “But you won’t have to worry about that! Okay, you won’t have to worry about it as much.  Aradia found the cure.”

                The patient sat up and smiled broadly.

                                “Oh!” he said, “She’s the sister I don’t have a motherfucking problem with anymore, right?”

                                “Guess you’ve finally buried the club now. Anyway, she made a special patch you put on your skin and it give you a tiny bit of sopor slime.”

                Gamzee seemed to salivate a little at the words sopor slime.

                                “Ummm, okay, sounds cool! Let’s try it out!”

                                “Right now? Do you plan on sleeping in the middle of the night?”

                                The sleepy troll shrugged. “Why not?”

                                “Fine, but remember this is bad for your sleep hygiene. Bad!”

                With some gauze and a plastic bag, Gamzee’s patron made a patch for him and taped it to his arm. He soon conked out on his pile of pillows.

                Karkat stayed with him while again surfing the internet. While he debated who should he ask to help him with his investigation into Gamzee’s past, Feferi, Sollux, or godforbid Terezi, there was a knock on the door. He scuttled downstairs. Crabdad was already on the job. Karkat put a finger to his lips, and then slowly opened the door a little to see who it was. Whoever it was simply threw the door open, hitting Karkat in the face.

                                “Hey Gam,” he cried out, “I knooow-w you been w-waiting for…”

                Eridan looked Karkat in the eye.

                                 “Oops w-wrong hive bye.”


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A new chapter! Hurray! There's another finished chapter, as well as a side story and a side side story, but getting this published is like sneaking out the Pentagon Papers. F* my life.

Eridan turned to leave but Karkat grabbed him by the collar of his jacket.

“Don’t swim away, fish boy,” he said, “If you’re going to visit, visit.”

The guest readjusted his clothes. He had adopted a new look since Karkat saw him last. Now he was wearing a black high-necked jacket with purple embroidery instead of his old scarf and cape.

“W-well, it’s good to see you again, Karkat,” Eridan reluctanly answered.

Karkat remarked, “I see you’ve at least changed a little over the sweep.”

“Of course I hawe, you dull little troll,” he sniffed, “I not only do I hawe a new look, but an entirely new outlook on life. I’we totally giwin’ up on stupid w-wrigglers’ games like FLARP and genocide and am instead pursuin’ a career in our illustrious nawy.”

“Feferi bribed you somehow.”

“Don’t you dare let the name of our future empress cross your dry lips! When she ascends the throne she’s gonna equalize the crap out of you filthy low-w-bloods and you are gonna lowe it!”

Karkat scoffed.

“Enough tiny talk, what did you come here for?” he growled.

“W-what sort of a question is that?” Eridan shot back, “I just came here to hang w-with my dear friend Gam?”

“And you couldn’t also hang out with your dear friend Kar?”

The friend looked away as he pressed his fingers together.

“Oh, you know-w how-w it is,” he said, “Sometimes tw-wo wery good friends need to be absolutely alone together.”

“Why exactly?”

“W-well, you know-w, so they can bond and shit.”

“What does this bonding shit entail exactly?”

The blushing troll whipped his head back to his accuser.

“Stop tryin’ to pull it out of me!” he yelled, “Yes, damnit, w-we had sex! Are you fuckin’ happy?”

“I can’t believe you,” his estranged friend said, “No, that’s the problem, I can believe you all too well. Why would you use him like that?”

“It wasn’t planned! I didn’t come to him that day for sex! It w-was friend-ship that drowe me.”

“Friendship and the rumors he’d lay down for anyone who knocked on his door.”

“It w-was a spontaneous passion! Me and Fef had just gone through one of our little fights and I felt sooo alooone. I w-went on a quest for solace and I found it in Gamzee Makara.”

“Solace? That’s a weird euphemism for wet nook.”

Karkat put his head in his hands and sighed.

“Ampora, I thought you were a romantic like me.”

“I could say the same about you, mister dirtmouth. You came here for a booty call and w-when you saw-w me you got jealous.”

He looked over Karkat’s scowl.

“Oh mother of pearl,” he moaned, “you didn’t come here for sex.”

“Gamzee is my moirail.”

“Oh god oh cod this is so embarrassin’” Eridan whined, “Here I am tellin’ you about how-w hard he rocked my w-world and you’re in a relationship w-with him. W-what can I say now-w?”

“How about nothing at all?”

Eridan lifted his head from his hands.

“No, this is good new-ws!” he said, “I hawe sailed here to announce my flushed feelin’s for Gamzee Makara!”

“Feelings as deep as the fucking ocean, right. That’s why you pailed and bailed.”

“I w-was conch-fused! That day w-was a crime of passion! I spent ewery night aw-way from him in despair!”

“That’s why you ran away from him, twice?”

“But I hawe shored up my courage and am now-w ready to open up my aquatic bladder-based vascular organ!”

“Did you even bring him one courting gift?”

Eridan looked around nervously.

Of-of course! You think I w-would come here empty-flippered?”

He opened up his sylladex and uncapchalogued something wet and seaweed covered.

“I sal-waged this fiwe pack an Faygo all for him,” he explained.

“Ewww…”

“Like you w-would hawe complained less if it w-was the traditional w-whale dork.”

“You’re right, this really is the best gift you could have gotten him.”

Eridan pushed the bottles away with his electric blue ankle boots. He then fell on his knees and grabbed Karkat’s hands.

“Karkat Vantas!” he begged, “W-will you let me take your be-low-ed moirail on a date?”

“Your tacky ass rings are cutting into my fingers!”

Before Karkat could pry his hands away, Gamzee appeared on the stairs.

“Whoooooa!” he said, “What’s going down here?”

“Gam w-what are ya doin’?” Eridan asked anxiously.

“I heard some Faygo dropping so I woke myself up.”

Eridan stood up and gestures at the bottles.

“I got all this booty for you.”

“That’s cool, but I think I’m likin’ orange juice better these nights,” he said.

Karkat coughed.

“Gam,” Eridan said, “W-will you be my matespirte?”

“Don’t know you, man.”

“W-what? W-we’re friends!”

“Got more friends than memories.”

“Don’t you remember that nearly magical day durin’ the bright season w-when I came to you in despair and w-we embraced and filled each other w-with di-wine hope?” Eridan ejaculated.

“Nope.”

“Ya fuckin’ douchebag!”

He lunged forward but Karkat held him back.

“How-w cod you? How-w cod you forget me?!” he yelled over the patron’s head, “I gawe you my wirginity! My red wirginity!”

“Sorry man, maybe you shouldn’t have given it away.”

“I tasted your pity!” Eridan choked out.

Karkat spun Eridan around to face him.

“One,” he said, “You do not say that in front of someone’s pale lover, and two, unless seatrolls have a chemistry lab in their mouths that is totally an urban legend.”

The seatroll backed off and dusted himself off again.

“So fin then,” he said, “I w-was just tryin’ to sawe the Highblood from shame but I see that’s impossible.”

“Leave the saving to me, you neurotic high-strung mess.”

“I didn’t ewen w-want that clow-wn! He doesn’t hawe a chest, his pelwis pokes too much, he takes too long, and he needs to wash off that makeup!”

“Get the fuck out of here, Captain Paprika, and take your Lonely Hearts Spade Band with you!”

“Your sex clow-wn isn’t even good on couch!”

“Just leave now, you douchebag! You are a user and a whiner and I would never allow you to get into any sort of relationship with my moirail! You two are the neediest fucks in the universe and I’d never let the typoon of shit that would be your matespriteship rip through my shore! You are a black hole of emotions! You have no ethics or morals! I never even want to see you again!”

Karkat added, “Could you tell Feferi I want to talk to her?”

Eridan sniffled, “She’s cuttlefishCaretaker now-w. She thought the old one gawe the w-wrong impression.”

“Good! Thanks for the help!” Karkat yelled.

Eridan left. Karkat looked over at Gamzee. The lanky troll strolled completely down the stairs.

Karkat said, “It’s a good thing you forgot about that little fuck.”

Gamzee replied, “Ninja’s always been taller than you, though it’s mostly in his shoes.”

“You remember him?”

“The minute I saw that purple swirl I recalled it all. I just wanted to mess with him.”

“Gamzee, you can be one stone cold bastard sometimes.”

The bastard flashed a wide fang-filled smile. “Heheheh, right on, allied brother.”

He went over and picked a bottle off from the pack. He examined the bottle like he’d never seen one before.

“Hmmm,” he said, “Grape flavor.”

Gamzee twisted it open and let the purple foam spew over his hand and down his arm. He threw his head back and chugged it down. He burped and capchalogued the pop. Karkat watched with a familiar disgust.

“So,” he asked, “really, Eridan? The genocidal maniac?”

“Hey, he’s not that bad of a guy,” Gamzee replied, “He’s always brought me news ‘bout the Old Goat and as he said, he’s given up on the genocide shit.”

“But he crossed the line when he used you just to empty his own shame globes. Didn’t he even think about you?”

“Man, you are being too motherfucking harsh. It was just some sex. He wasn’t the best lover but he wasn’t the worst. We all need to calm down here.”

“You’re right, he isn’t the worst.”

Gamzee looked off to the left. “Yeah, he didn’t last long, he puked on my bone bulge, and he called me Fef the whole time, but he wasn’t…”

The troll’s eyes turned red.

“He called me Fef the whole time, HE CALLED ME FEF,” he screamed, “I’LL KILL HIM!”

The raging troll stomped towards the door and his patron went to stop him but was thrown back. Gamzee stopped and looked over at his patron.

“Aww fuck, sorry man!” he said and then rushed over, “I’m not pissed at you.”

“I know,” Karkat said as he got up.

“It’s just, man, it’s just,” Gamzee said, “nobody ever comes to me for me.”

“I’m here for you, and I’m not asking you to wear any wigs or dresses.”

“Naw, it wasn’t like that, he just combed his hands through my hair while he…”

“Enough about that douchebag,” Karkat gagged, “How did you sleep?”

“Like a motherfucking grub!”

“No day…nightmares?”

“Yeah, but they weren’t nothing, just strollin’ and lookin’ at the horror shows popping up along the road. I was like, that’s cool, eldritch horrors, hope your dark carnival goes well!”

“Good. You better thank Aradia for the help.”

“But now I don’t feel so good. That seatroll really got to me.”

“Don’t worry, you’re not the only one feeling sick.”

“No, not that way, it’s more like he reminded me of someone. Someone who ain’t around anymore. Cause I killed him.”

“You remember?”

“I remember it all.”

  


[](http://mspt3k.tumblr.com/) [](http://failure-artist.tumblr.com/private/8428210896/tumblr_lpcw8mtW611qm5gan)


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This chapter is very triggering.

The old horn pile was back in its place in the middle of the leisureblock. The moirail laid back on it while his patron shifted uneasily on the pointy instruments. Crabdad wasn't around. It was time for a good ol' fashioned feelings jam.

Gamzee started, "Remember how I told you about how my ex came over and I laid down for her big friend?"

"Yes, and you do know that was rape? And not just a little, it was completely illegal rape."

"Yeah, I known, but at the time I thought I was just being a good little wriggler." Gamzee laughed bitterly. "But I was too much of a wriggler and she needed someone to hold me down so her two friends lent a hand. There were four fucking seatrolls on that beach that night: the big guy, her two friends, and her herself. Goddamn four."

"So did you kill her?"

"Should have, but I didn't."

"Did you kill the troll who raped you?"

"Fuck, that would be cruel! It'd be like killing a dog for humpin' yo leg. Ninja was some sort of mutant retard. Blood so bright it was almost neon! Probably already been culled."

"Yes. Bright blood," Karkat mumbled as he looked down at his bandages.

"Hey, don't interupt me cause I'm bound to forget everything if you do. Anyway, one of her friends was this stone-faced jerk who didn't have much to do with me, but the other friend came over a few nights later. He just sat down and expected me to do something and there was only one thing I could think to do."

* * *

You wipe your mouth, getting both white face paint and purple seed on your hand. The older troll wipes his soft bone bulge with a CC monogramed handkerchief and tucks it into his Capri-style black swim pants. He leans back.

"I _w_ as _w_ rong in my earlier re _v_ ie _w_ of your hosting skills," he says, "You ha _v_ e re _w_ arded my trust in you."

You say, "I done good?"

"You ha _v_ e done a good job. Come up here." He offers his hand. "The Highblood shouldn't kneel like a peasantblood."

You take his hand and sit next to him.

"Sorry I _w_ as so rude to you earlier," he says, "Oh, and I'm sorry about that scene four nights ago. She's _v_ ery scary."

You nod. He slides up closer to you.

"Let's start this again," he whispers into your ear, "I'm Celmar Ceumar, but you can call me Cici."

He puts his hand on your shaking thighs.

"I'm Gamzee, I'm Gamzee Makara but I guess you already know that."

"Yes, _Gam_ zee."

Cici slides his hand down your loose pants. You squirm even more as his ringed fingers grope your still sore genitals.

"What the fuck!" you yell.

"Just returning the fa _v_ or," he breathes.

You jump away from him and pry his hand away.

You growl, "Get off my junk, man!"

He looks down at the purple ring around his wrist with wide eyes and a wide smile.

"You are _v_ ery strong, _w_ riggler," he says.

You reply, "Sorry, but it just doesn't feel good, you know."

"I kno _w_ ho _w_ it feels. I was ra _v_ ished too my first time. But don't _w_ orry, _w_ riggler, one night it will feel really good."

He pets your head and you have to admit that does feel good. You move back towards him. He smells like sea salt.

"I think _w_ e're going to be _v_ ery good friends," he says, "Do you have trollian? My _nom de plume_ is psychoDramaturgist."

"Oh, whoooa, terminalCapricious here."

He puts his arm around you.

He says, "Do you like clowns? I sure do like clowns."

* * *

"So after I got him off, he said he liked me and he stayed over the whole fucking day! It was hella tight!"

"Well, yeah..."

"He would come around after that, sometimes with other people, trolls who wanted to get away from their hive and lusus, but often came alone so we could fool around. And after a few moon segments, he came to me with this new way of fooling around."

* * *

You shift your naked body from foot to foot. You aren't embarassed as much as you are confused.

"I don't really get this game, man," you whine, "Why am I naked and you aren't?"

Cici also shifts his body in the beanbag.

"Don't _w_ orry, I'll soon join you in your nudity."

"Cause I can understand us both wearin' clothes and playin' a game or us both being naked and fooling around, but not a mix of the two."

"It's...it's an acting game," your older friend breathes.

"Yeah, I know, you love that acting shit, but how do we play this bitch? Tell me the rules again so I don't forget."

"I give you an emotion to act out, and you do so."

"Huh, just that? I can remember that. Hit me."

Cici smiles and stifles a laugh. He then says in a deeply serious voice:

"Sho _w_ me anger."

You are now confused again. You still have to give him a show. You frown and shake your fist.

"Hey man," you say, "stop doing that shit and start doing other shit! I told you to knock it off and stop being that way, man, why can't you do that?"

You stop shaking your fist.

"How long do I hafta show these emotions?"

"Until I say so, and I certainly didn't say you could stop," your friend tells you, "That was a horrible performance. Just horrid."

You shrug.

"Sorry, my motherfucking best friend, but I really don't get angry."

"You don't get angry?"

"Naw, man, not really."

He sits up and yells, "You're a troll! You're a high-ranking member of a _w_ arrior race! Our rage has conquered the galaxy and you can't sho _w_ me that infamous rage?"

"I don't have anything to be pissed off about."

"You' _v_ e been abandoned by your o _w_ n lusus and nobody lo _v_ es you! Aren't you pissed off about that?" 

You bow your head. "Whoooa, why you got to say something like that? That just brings me down, not pisses me off."

"But I'm telling you to be angry, not sad. _W_ hy can't you delie _v_ er that?"

"I'm real sorry, bro, but I don't think this is a good game for me. I don't have it in me to be all angry. I'm chill like the deep blue sea."

"Chill? CHILL?!?"

He gets up lighting fast and steps over to you. You are tall for your age but he is tall for any age.

He yells, "The higher the blood the higher the emotions and that goes double for the Highblood!"

"But...but...I'm not really that high, am I? Aren't you higher?"

"High, yes! You try to dull your passions with the sopor slime," he spits, "But I _w_ ant you to let it out! Sho _w_ me the Highblood!"

"Who the fuck is a highblood if it ain't a seablood?"

"You uneducated idiot! You foolish heathen!" He starts to gesture. "You are descended from a race of killer clo _w_ ns! You subjuggulated entire castes and only the fucking empress could stop your rage!"

"Whoooooooa!" you yell, "Honk honk!"

The raging troll grabs you and shakes you back and forth.

"Mother Grub," he shouts, "You _w_ eren't just some peon, you _w_ ere the GRAND HIGHBLOOD! Be the GRAND HIGHBLOOD! Hit me _w_ ith your motley stick!"

He shakes and slaps you and you honk with each slap. You are so afraid and terrified and you feel something rise up within you. A club comes out on its own.

"honk HONK!"

* * *

"He made me get angry, and then I would subjuggulate him until we both pailed, and then I'd calm down and he'd be all in the afterglow and shit."

* * *

Cici lays back all in the afterglow and shit. You stand over him and stare.

"Are you okay, man?" you ask.

Your partner smiles and you notice several of his teeth are now missing. He laughs a little.

"I ha _v_ e ne _v_ er been more okay in my life," he says.

"But your head is all bleeding over the bag!"

He rubs his blood-encrusted mop-haired head and his sore horns.

He explains, "It's just a head _w_ ound, those al _w_ ays look much _w_ orse than they really are. Just, just keep me from going to sleep and I'll be fine." He smirks. "Besides, it's not _all_ blood."

You look at him and notice not all of the fluid on him is his color. There is some bluier purple fluid next to his powdered mouth and it trails down his body, down to his now-crotchless pants. You look at your own body and see it painted blue and purple.

"Whoooa, holy clown, what the fuck did I do?" you ask.

Cici uncapchalogues a smokeless nicostimulant miniwand and starts inhaling.

"You did _wonderful_ , catfish. That _w_ as the best black sex I ha _v_ e e _v_ er had in my nine s _w_ eeps on this planet." He coughs. "O _ww_ , I think you got my gills. I _w_ on't be able to s _w_ im for a perigee," he moans happily.

"Well, hey," you reply, "if you're happy, I'm happy." You aren't sure that's true.

He removes the miniwand from his split lips and looks up at you.

"But really, _w_ riggler, tell me how you felt. _W_ as it good for you?"

"All I can remember, I felt angry and then I felt warm and then so motherfucking happy and now I'm still warm but I'm shiverin' my ass off."

Your partner leers at your shivering naked body.

"I imagine you feel relief. This game certainly helped relie _v_ e me of my tensions."

"Sorry but I just can't get this crazy idea into my think pan. How was this anything good, for you I mean?"

Cici takes a big hit off his miniwand and then stretches out.

"It's all about blood psychology, _w_ riggler. _W_ e just reenacted the torrid drama bet _w_ een our respecti _v_ e ancestors and in doing so released certain chemicals into our bloodstreams affecting...well, I'm just relie _v_ ed I finally got to go all the _w_ ay _w_ ith you."

"Are we gonna do this again, sometime?" you ask.

"Gamzee Makara," he says, " _W_ e are going to _spend_ a lot of time together."

* * *

"And after our first time we did spend some more time together, but he didn't come over as much and every time he did all we did was that shitty ass game. I guess it didn't matter as much cause I was making new friends at that point, but I still missed those golden handjobs,"

"Sorry about the T-Motherfucking-I, but that's how I felt."

"Anyway, one night, like early and not like almost dawn he came over dressed like a motherfucking fly gangsta and we had a good time, a real good time."

* * *

You lay on the couch next to a pail. Finally, a night where you didn't have to play any games and could just chill out. You sit up and notice your partner is adjusting his own clothes in a funhive mirror. He has changed back into his newly tailored black and purple cadet uniform. He pokes his arched horns through his Imperial Film Corp beret and turns around sharply on the heel of his new boots.

"Fuck, I still love that uniform," you say, "So fucking fly."

"And this is just the cadet's uniform," he smirks.

He then puts away his smile. He turns toward the door.

"Time for me to take my exit," he says.

"But it's like midnight, my motherfucking friend!"

"I ha _v_ e to _w_ ake up early tomorro _w_ for the shuttle."

You get off the couch and stand before him, clothed in your usual outfit.

"What the fuck is this shit about?" you ask.

Cici sighs. "I told you already about my plans."

You rub your chin. You think you can recall him saying something important, but he was eating out your waste chute at the time so you really couldn't hear it.

Cici continues, "Tomorro _w_ I take the maturity shuttle like _every other troll in my fucking generation_ to the Alternia-1 Space Station and get processed into the Imperial Film Corp. Can you get that to lay still in your thinkpan?"

Your eyes start to tear up.

"You're leaving bro, my motherfucking best friend, you're leaving?" you babble.

You grab his arm but he pulls it back.

"I _w_ as hoping you _w_ ouldn't act this _w_ ay if I ga _v_ e in and had red sex _w_ ith you, but I see I _w_ as _w_ rong."

"Will I be seeing you again?"

Your big goat eyes stare at his face. His powdered face shows no emotion. Indigo tears fall down your unmade face.

"No," he says.

"No?" you echo, "I mean, I guess you can't take me, but what about when I get big enough?"

"In my opinion, I don't think you will," he explains, "You'll probably get culled before you reach maturity. Shame since you come from such an illustrious bloodline, but that's ho _w_ fate rolls."

"Motherfucking culled?" you cry.

"Are you really that surprised? You ha _v_ e no lusus, you ha _v_ e no education, you ha _v_ e no talents or skills that aren't far belo _w_ your caste, you don't ha _v_ e any stable relationships, you're addicted to an incredible _v_ ile drug, you're a member of an outla _w_ religion, and you have terrible taste in clo _w_ ns!"

Your clubs come out. He doesn't notice. He's too busy looking at the mirror.

"Of course, the last one isn't a culling offense," he says, "but I just _w_ anted to lay that out on the table."

"honk honk honk," you sob.

"Yes, _w_ e get it, you're clo _w_ n themed, enough _w_ ith the honking."

"HONK HONK HONK," you yell, "TIME FOR ONE LAST GAME!"

* * *

"But then he told me he was leaving, and we argued, and then...we played a game? And then he left?"

"He left?"

* * *

You are naked and wet and alone in your hive. Sunlight from the red sun rises through the open door. You think you can remember something Celmar Ceumar said. Something about a red light? He sure did yell it a lot last night.

You take some pies and soon you don't remember any of that.

* * *

"But now I'm starting to think I killed him."

"Well," Karkat piped in, "Who the hell was he? What was his name?"

"I can't remember, I'm so motherfucking sorry but I can't remember his motherfucking name!" Gamzee moaned, "I'm just no good at remembering names."

"Do you remember my name?"

"Of course I do! You're my patron and my oldest friend! How could I fucking forget my Kitten!"

His patron and oldest friend facepalmed.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> UPDATE 10/25/11: Made it more closure-y.

Karkat’s head was buried in his hands as he spoke.

                                “Urghhh, I can’t believe you called me Kitten,” he groaned, “Where did you even get that name?”

                                Gamzee answered, “Oops, yeah, your name’s Karkat isn’t it?”

                                “YES.”

                                “Hey, car cat! Beep beep meow meow!” The clown honked an imaginary horn. “But I guess Kitten could be your nickname!”

                                “NO.”

                                “But I’m just goin’ to keep thinking you’re Kitten!”

                                “I still don’t have a fucking clue why your think pan keeps panning that up. In what universe am I cat-like at all?”

                Karkat pulled his head up and looked around.

                                “Where is that lusus of mine?” he asked, “Damn thing must have wandered off after Eridan burst in. Now how the fuck does a seven-foot walking crab disappear anyway?”

                                “It’s kind of nice, you know, that he’s gone. Quieter this way.”

                                “It’s fucking unnerving! Besides, when did you care about quiet? Did you forget we’re sitting on your horn collection?”

                Karkat got up slowly, setting off some of the horns. He groaned at each honk. Gamzee leapt up, and then put his hands on his head.

                                “Could we just wait till he pops out and freaks us all out?” he asked.

                Karkat didn’t answer, but instead walked to the door and opened it up.

                                “Search over,” he said.

                Crabdad was outside in the surf, doing what Karkat would call frolicking if it weren’t his lusus doing it. The boy’s shoulders fell in relief. His friend’s shoulders tensed up.

                Karkat started stepping out of the hive without even thinking about it. He was halfway to the water when he turned around and saw that Gamzee was hiding behind the door.

                                He asked, “Are you still afraid of my lusus? I promise he won’t fucking hurt you and besides he’s not as big as…well he’s not that big!”

                Gamzee stepped out of the hive and shut the door behind him. He looked down at his hands as he took out and put back his clubs over and over. He then finally walked over to Karkat. He was shaking a little and it couldn’t have been from the wind. They both looked out at the sea.

                                “Wow,” Gamzee said, “Just wow. Been so long since I been on the beach.”

                                “You live here,” Karkat stressed.

                                “I mean, I know that, I’ve been here, but I haven’t really been here in a long time, you know what I’m sayin’?”

                                “When do I ever know what you’re saying?”

                Gamzee sat down and pulled his knees up to his chest.

                                “I mean,” he said, “I haven’t really hung out like this, really enjoyed the beach. I step out of my hive, but it’s always to go to point A, point B, point what-ever-the-fuck, you know?”

                Karkat sat down next to his moirail.

                                “Yeah, I know,” he said.

                They watched Crabdad scuttle around for the longest time. It was strange fate that led Karkat to having such a lusus. He wasn’t suppose to have a sea creature as a lusus; he wasn’t suppose to have a lusus at all, but he preferred not to think about that. Crabdad could and did live perfectly fine out of the water, but sometimes he would get the urge to go back to the sea. Karkat remembered one of those times. He turned to Gamzee.

                                “Remember the first time we met?” he asked, “We were three sweeps old and Crabdad had run off to the sea and I followed him and I found you and the Old Goat and we played all night till we came down with friendship?”

                                “Nope.”

                                “Ya fuckin’ douchebag,” Karkat sighed.

                                “Sorry, I can’t remember anything that happened before I started the slime,” Gamzee explained.

                                “I should be used to your memory loss by now but it still comes like a punch to the digestive sack every time.”

                                “Hey man, it’s not really that bad, me forgetting when I met you. It just means, for me, there’s never been a time when I didn’t know you.” He paused. “Or a time when I wasn’t drugged up.”

                Karkat thought back to that first meeting. So Gamzee wasn’t high back then? He had never really thought about it much but his friend had been a bit weird. Still the same old silly clown, of course, but there was an edge to him. He was so tense when he asked Karkat what his blood color was, like he really didn’t want to know the answer, and he was the only troll Karkat had ever met who actually accepted the answer “gray”. He relaxed after that, but during their games he became easily frustrated. Karkat remembered him throwing a full bottle of Faygo at his head.  He was a high-strung little wriggler.

                And Karkat remembered, after the Old Goat had left, Gamzee offered his hive to him for the day. Three sweep old Karkat said he already had a hive. Wrigglers are such jerks, seven sweep old Karkat thought. 

                He put his arm around his moirail. His moirail leaned into him. They both watched the ocean as it ebbed and flowed in their ancient rhythm under the light of the two moon. Karkat found this incredible boring but hey, Gamzee liked it.

                                Karkat finally asked, “Gamzee, do you hate me?”

                Gamzee sucked in the air. Karkat was afraid of what his answer would be.

                                Gamzee answered, “Nope.”

                                “Not anymore?”

                                “You know, I don’t know if I really ever hated you.”

                                “You sure acted like you hated me, what with you yelling that you hate me.”

                                “I was just pissed off at everything. I hated that I got so low and I felt bad that I needed someone to fix me up. I never really wanted it to be you.”

                                “Fuck, I thought you liked me now! Are you going back again?”

                                “No, I don’t mean it like that, bro! It’s just you got your own issues and I didn’t want to bother you more.”

                                “I’ve said it before, but you really should have bothered me earlier. We could have gotten together much earlier.”

                                “Like when we was three?”

                                “Ughh, not that early! You can’t have a proper romantic relationship that young!”

                                “Why not? If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be at any goddamn time!”

                                Karkat asked, “So, how do you feel about me?”

                                Gamzee answered, “I’m happy as hell about you!”

                                “I mean, do you pity me?”

                                “I guess I pity you, but I also feel some magical feeling beyond all them good ol’ fashioned feelings.

                                “I feel motherfucking friendship for you.”

                                “You can’t _feel_ friendship for someone, it’s a condition commonly found in certain aliens species and rarely in trolls!” Karkat replied, “But yes, I feel the same way.”

                                “Fuck yeah, motherfucker.”

                Gamzee suddenly shot up. He looked off at something far away, and then stood up, bowling Karkat over.

                                “Holy motherfucking Mirthful Messiahs!” he cried.

                Karkat stood up to see what Gamzee was looking at. He saw nothing. Gamzee turned around and pointed out to some spot in the ocean, jumping up and down. Karkat again strained to see something and saw a dark shape fifty yards away coming to the shore. Could it really be that, Karkat thought. His question was answered when the dark shape surfaced and reared it white head. It was the Old Goat.

                Gamzee ran into the ocean to greet his lusus, ignoring that he was fully-clothed. He was waist-deep when he finally reached his lusus and embraced the creature’s giant head. The lusus and charge honked in chorus.

                Karkat took off his shoes and socks and reluctantly walked into the surf until the water was up to his knees. Closer up, he saw that Gamzee was crying. He was shocked. He had never seen Gamzee cry, and giving the events of the past few nights, that was saying something.

                                “It’s not dead?” he asked.

                                Gamzee wasn’t offended. “Nah, he ain’t, I knew he wasn’t. The Old Goat’s been around a few times, but I haven’t been around to greet him in a long time.” He sniffled. “Sometimes the other kids scared him away.”

                                “Bastards.”

                Karkat’s own lusus came up to see the hullaballo. It went to greet the seagoat as if they were old friends, which Karkat supposed they were. It was just weird to think of your lusus having friends.

                Karkat walked further into the water until he was in front of the seagoat. He felt intimidated. How could Gamzee be afraid of his little lusus when he had one the size of a worm trolley? The Old Goat reared up its head and extended it to sniff the young troll. A tense moment past. Then it licked Karkat.

                                “Eeewwwww,” Karkat moaned.

                He was glad he was in the water so he could wash all that saliva off. The Old Goat returned to its cuddle fest with his charge and his friend. Karkat shrugged his shoulders, and joined them.  It was the weirdest thing he had ever done. Well, one of the weirdest things.

                                He said, “I’m your charge’s patron. I’m going to take care of your little wriggler, so don’t eat me.”

                The Old Goat honked in reply. Karkat couldn’t understand the other troll’s lusus, but he knew everything was going to be all right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this provides something close to closure. I might write more but not for a long long time (like a year). Enjoy what I've written.

**Author's Note:**

> 7/24/2013:  
> Yeah, this is a melodramatic piece of shit, but it's MY melodramatic piece of shit.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Revisiting "My Motherfucking Best Friend"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10536573) by [FailureArtist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FailureArtist/pseuds/FailureArtist)




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